The Secret to Persevering in the Arena

Developing a Stronger Theology for the Arena
Photo by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash

Recently I had a week of awkward engagements, mostly in the form of writing emails telling people what they don’t want to hear, or pushing into uncomfortable topics with others.

Yuck. I thought, “Is there a hole I can go crawl into now?” But each of those interactions was necessary because of the tough arenas of life God has called me into for this season.

Brene Brown, in her book Rising Strong, says, “an arena is any moment when or place where we have risked showing up and being seen.”

Inspired by the Teddy Roosevelt 1910 speech (below), those arenas are places of blood, sweat, and tears, where we fight for what we believe in. We hope for victory, but know that failing is always a possibility.

This is a “venture into tough new arenas” year for me. They ask more of me than I want to give sometimes. These arenas call me to risk, lead, take stands, and put myself out there.

Can I be honest? Making a difference, affecting change, living bravely, all sounds great in theory. But it’s tiring.

A lot of the time, I want to quit. Stop writing. Step away from leading. Let things go rather than fight for a stance. Comfort is more appealing than potential failure, regardless of what I or others might gain.

It’s hard to put yourself out there when there’s a risk of falling on your face. So much more appealing to stay on those safe shores. And yet, we must keep fighting.

When I am tempted to step out of the arena, wipe the blood, sweat, and tears off my face, and throw in the towel, I feel a check in my spirit. A voice says,

“Stay. Stay and fight. You don’t need to stop. You just need more truth for this.”

We don’t need to quit.

We just need to get stronger. And where does that strength come from? It comes from the truth. Here’s the secret to not quitting when life is tough:

We need a stronger theology for the arena.

What does that look like? To begin with, it means more strength training out of the ring.

We train our minds with the truth; that this is for His glory, not our ours; that there is no failure so great to put us out of His reach; that every second in the ring is only possible because of His power, not our own; that a knockdown does not define our worth.

The more we are called to the arena, the more we need to feed our minds and hearts the truth about who He is and who we are. Then, when we are tempted to quit, instead we choose to double down on those truths.

Second, we need to train our hearts to hear our coach’s voice, even in the thick of the fight. He is with us, for us, in us. No one is more for us in the arena than He is.

We can’t always step out of the ring, so we must learn the moment by moment Yahweh breathing to slow our hearts and call us back to depend on His voice.

Staying in the arena means growing the humility to admit when we need a minute in the corner to catch our breath. We take time in the corner to get toweled off and refreshed by His Presence, His Spirit, His words. The longer we’re there, the harder it is, but there’s always a place of rest.

It’s hard to win without anyone in your corner. We need cheerleaders, people who know why we’re in there and believe in what we’re doing. Those are the people who will shout at us to get back up when we fall.

And we need to remember why we stepped into the arena in the first place. If this is God’s call, He gives us what we need to fight.

He never promised easy. Nor did He promise victory in every battle. But if we strengthen our theology, we can stay in it until it’s finished, no matter how many times we fall.

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Related posts:

Moana and the Power of Grit

Soldier On, Friends 

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How to develop a stronger theology for staying in the fight
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Out of Our Comfort Zone

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Out of Our Comfort Zone
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Confession: I played on what might have been the worst high school soccer team ever. We didn’t score one goal my junior year. We lost one game 0-21. That’s a bad football score.

So it was with great joy that I watched our daughter’s team leave a trail of wins in their wake as they blazed through a spring season undefeated. Girls from the other team sometimes walked away crying. I felt sorry for them – I was one of those girls back in the day.

Our team worked well together. It came easily. The question wasn’t, “Will they win?” But “By how much?” If the other team managed a goal, our girls were disappointed.

That fall, everything changed. They were the same team, with a few new girls. There wasn’t a weak member on the team. But they moved up to playing club level, and since they were the only U-11 team around, they were playing U-12 teams.

They were suddenly out of their comfort zone.

Being Out Of the Comfort Zone

We kept trying to convince them this is a good thing. It was hard to believe when they spent most of their games simply trying to fend off the other team. Their games were so intense I thought about bringing valium. (For me, not them). We told the girls, “You will grow from this. You’ll be better players. This is how it happens.”

Easy wins are fun, but they don’t stretch us.

It’s a good reminder for me, when I’m tempted to say, “easier, please, God.” I know that it is not the easy paths that strengthen me, stretch me, move me closer to where I want to be. To quote from Josh Irby, “In the Discomfort Zone there is insecurity, fear, pain, confusion. But, from the Discomfort Zone come life, hope, change, passion.”

The discomfort zone in our lives is where God is at work. He pushes us there out of His great love for us; He loves us too much to leave us where we were. Our challenge is to be content to stay in that place while He shapes us.

What about you? Are you willing to be in places of discomfort in order to grow?

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