I struggled for a long time over whether or not to go for a run this morning.  I looked at the weather to see how windy it was, and how windy it would be tomorrow (“will tomorrow be less windy—maybe I should wait till then”), and what will that do to my miles for the week.  The bottom line:  I just didn’t feel like it.  In fact, I really (no, really) didn’t want to go.  As I often do in such situations, I asked myself: “When I go to bed tonight, which choice would I like to have made?”  Still, I struggled.  Then I heard a small voice in my head (don’t know for sure if it was also a still voice too or not—probably just me) say, “If you don’t go now, you aren’t going to go.”  So I went.

I know many people who live life more spontaneously than I do.  And sometimes I give myself grief for not living more like that.  After all, isn’t it freer, simpler—“Won’t you be happier and more free-wheeling if you just relax already and take the easy road?  Why work so hard?  If it’s that hard, why fight it?  Aren’t you just fighting against yourself?  Just be who you are!  This isn’t really what you want, is it?”

Well, yes, it is.  Because the battle isn’t really over what I want to do and what I don’t want to do.  It only appears that way.  You see, the man I want to be, the Christ-follower I think God has called me to be, would go out on that run.  That’s the man I’m striving to be.  The “me” that wants to stay at home and veg truly is the “me” I am today.  But he’s not the man I’m becoming.  I choose to live as that man; otherwise I’ll never become him.  That man isn’t simply and solely a work of God—he’s a product of my own choices and commitments.  (Granted, my will and my desires originate as God’s gifts to me, but they are no less shaped by my own efforts—or lack thereof.  I will not just wake up one day to find myself the man God intends me to be without to some degree living as that man today.)

This doesn’t mean I have to fight myself at every turn.  It also doesn’t mean that what I don’t want must be what’s good for me.  It’s simply a recognition that the “me” I’m becoming is someone better, stronger, nobler, more courageous and more faithful than the “me” I am today.

I want to be that man.  So, in the end, did I do what I wanted to do?  You’re darn right I did, and it was the hardest thing I’ve done today.  Tomorrow’s things may be harder, but I’ll be better equipped to choose rightly and well then because I won this small fight today.

Today’s fight?  No big deal.  No one would ever know or care if I had stayed home.  And that makes me wonder:  How many fights like these are going on all day every day in other people’s lives?  I know there are many.  And I know many of them struggle and lose—because that’s been me before too.  I want the losses to be the exception, though, not the rule.

Genuine wisdom and discernment are called for here, too, because I could make this a law if I wanted to.  I could decide that every time I struggle to make a decision I’ll do the hard thing, the thing I don’t really want to do.  But this isn’t a law, it’s a battle to become someone, to become a whole person, a man who not only honors Christ but reflects Christ.

I can only make that decision tomorrow because of what I’ve learned today.  I know pretty well where and how I struggle, and I know what temptation looks and feels like (well, much of the time!).

Here’s one of the temptations:  Tell everybody else that this is the choice they should make too.  It may be, but it very well might not be.  I can’t even tell myself that I should make this same choice every day.  As I said, this isn’t a law.  If that’s the case, how can I know which choice to make on any given day?  Because the choice isn’t about running or not, or eating or not, or buying those clothes or not.  The choice is whether or not to be the man or woman Christ is calling me to be.  Will this choice, whatever it is, lead me closer to, or farther from, that man?

The easy thing for me is to choose laziness (many of those who know me will push back here, but trust me).  For others, the easy thing is constant activity, perpetual busy-ness.  Whereas I may need to get up and do something, the activist may very well need to just stop it and sit down, or even just go to bed.  That could be at least as hard a struggle as my decision to run this morning was—and I mean that.

You are not becoming me.  Neither am I becoming you.  But perhaps instead of living by the law we can live by the principle that in order to be the person I want to be when I wake up in the presence of Christ, I may have to choose something in this moment that runs contrary to what I want to do in this moment.  I’m willing to sacrifice this moment for eternity—now there’s a principle to live by!  Not a law, or a rule, but a guide.  And the beauty of it is that you and I, however differently we’re wired, can both live by the same principle without necessarily making the same exact cookie-cutter choices.