From the Bishops Pulpit: The Root of Mastery is Practice: The Trying of Your Faith is Practice You were called to master what you do. In the literature, mastery is defined as good habits challenged. Every Christian was called to accreditation (i.e., to study to show yourself approved) and to affirm your faith through practice. Yet everyone doesn’t practice equally. Practice doesn’t mean anything if you’re not focused. That being true, the majority of Christians never practice Christianity. 1 Corinthians 9:24 “Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.” Here Apostle Paul is comparing an Olympic runner and a Christian. In the Olympics you have athletes who have mastered their sport and have gathered to compete in order to obtain a prize. We’ve been given instruction to run so that we might receive the prize but some of us are just running to get by. Anything that you’re called to do if you don’t practice, you’re unfaithful and you’re shortchanging self. Be honest. Stop praying to be excellent in something that you don’t practice. 1 Corinthians 9:25 “And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.” Mastery: command or grasp of a subject, expert skill or knowledge, having the power or command Trying: to attempt to do or accomplish, test the effect or result of; to test the quality, value, fitness or accuracy Your faith versus your circumstances: Your circumstances try to limit you and put you in a box. In order to overcome your circumstances you have to think outside of the constraints of your condition. When you think inside of your circumstances you are in bondage and you’re stuck with the problem. However, when you think outside of your circumstances you’re walking in solutions and the victory. Faith takes you outside of your circumstances. Hence, you have to hope outside of your circumstance. You have to pull down your victory by faith (i.e., what is not seen) and bring into your circumstance the power to change your reality. Satan is only in your midst for practice because practice makes perfect, brings you to maturity. Faith only works after you get out of your comfort zone. The Holy Spirit is always doing everything for you to get out of your comfort zone. It’s only when you deal with unfamiliar ground that you use faith. Anything that you’re familiar with your brain responds to out of routine. The brain seeks to automate everything because as soon as you automate something you don’t have to actively think about it. We should practice beyond our limits because faith operates outside of your comfort zone. Average is a steady state; free from highs or lows but average isn’t satisfying. Whoever lives an average life is a person who is not satisfied with his or her life because he or she is not challenging life. When you challenge your life you move in mastery. Mastery is pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone while learning how to restore and take care of yourself. The literature suggests that most musicians when they practice play parts of pieces that they’re good at but expert musicians tend to focus on those parts that are hard-- the parts they haven’t mastered. Mastery is practicing something you’re unfamiliar with until it becomes familiar and your brain begins to automate it. Have you been practicing things you’ve already mastered? You develop mastery through deliberate practice. But practicing something you have yet to master! The trying of your faith works patience, and after patience has its perfect work, you’ll want nothing (Yakov, which is anglicized as James 1:3-4). So the trying of your faith is practice. It prepares you for the next great thing that the Heavenly Father is going to bring into your life. As we read in Hebrews 5:8, “Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;” YHWH uses the trials/trying of your faith to perfect you. If practice is too hard for you life will be too hard! Yet practice prepares us to master our faith. The Stages of Acquiring a Skill: 1) Intellectualizing the task: you discover new strategies in order to perform it better; during this phase you make a lot of mistakes. The only way to learn something new is to fail. At some point your faith will fail but that is part of the process—how else will you grow and discover? 2) Associative Stage: learning the task but making fewer mistakes and getting better 3) Autonomous Stage: you’re on autopilot; you do it with skill and you access things instantaneously from your mental cabinet; the brain automates actions You can’t master anything on autopilot. You must deliberately practice something in order to master it. You can’t master your faith on autopilot. Rather, it needs to be challenged. Some of us are going on autopilot in an area where we need innovation in order to arrive at mastery. In your life you should be doing something that pushes you out/away from being average because an average life is unsatisfying. In Christ your faith is always challenged, there’s always a new circumstance. You get blessed when you think outside of the confines of that circumstance. According to studies, people only attend for approximately 90 minutes. Practices leads to the highest level of excellence; In one study, it suggests that it takes at least 10,000 hours of deliberate in order to arrive at mastery in any field How can you practice your faith without a problem? Stop praying to be in the faith super bowl and you didn’t even make the faith playoffs. In order to be in the faith super bowl you have to overcome many things. Faith represents one of the few aspects of man that is like the Heavenly Father. Faith takes creativity and creativity is limited by your imagination. If you can imagine it you can achieve/do it. Your faith is proportionate to your hope. You must learn to hope yourself out of your circumstances. Just use your imagination. If you can think it you can do it. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. But this can’t take place on autopilot. You must arrive at the point where you’re no longer afraid to make mistakes. In your practice you need coaching (expert input); In the literature it is reported that experts in their field practice a minimum of 90 minutes a day; the highest level of experts practice 4 hours a day but in 90 minute shifts; You’re not focused if you’re multitasking or distracted. What makes things easy for experts is the power of ritual—highly precise behavior that you do according to specific time intervals so that it becomes automated. People put too much emphasis on will power and discipline. It’s not so much will power but focusing on your craft effectively and efficiently. Whatever you constantly fail in you become familiar with …it becomes your comfort zone and then you go to the next level. Too many of us don’t make it to the next level because we’re afraid of failing. Are you practicing your life? Your Christian walk or what the Heavenly Father called you to do? James 1:2-3 “2My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; 3 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.” Peripipto: to fall into something Peirasmos: temptation; an experiment; an attempt; a trial; a proving; the trial made up of your bodily condition Dokimion: the proving; that by which something is tried or proved Understand that temptation is practice—to see whether something can be done. YHWH allows temptation because it causes you to master your Christian living. In temptation Satan is experimenting with us--challenging us to master our faith. Your faith can’t be mastered unless you leave your comfort zone. It has to be tried. And, your faith will be tried until you gain patience and you’re perfected. Satan wants you in a place where you no longer imagine good things happening. If you want to live or go to the next level you have to get off autopilot and no longer be afraid of failing! Fear fights against progress. Put yourself in a situation where you’re not afraid to fail. That’s where Christ wants you. He wants you somewhere you could fail so you will look to him for your faith. The trying of your faith means you keep failing, and you learn and you begin to master things. Too many Christians view failure as sin. Rather, failure is a set up for mastery. When you are afraid to fail you’re afraid to try and to do! Hupomone: patience, consistency, endurance, steadfast waiting for something; enduring and sustaining When you’re afraid of your faith failing, you settle. Prayer alone won’t do it. Practice will. And, practice must be challenging. “4 But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” (Yakov 1:4) Recall, “perfect” here is maturity. “1Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with Elohim through our Adonai Yahshua Christos: 2 By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of Elohim. 3 And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; 4 And patience, experience; and experience, hope: 5 And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of Elohim is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us.” (Romans 5:1-5) Practice makes experience. The harder the practice, the more experienced you become and the easier the game. Some of us never make it to the hope phase because we don’t get past the experience. Yet hope fuels our faith; fuels our practice.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 08:44:41 +0000
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