After a one-week hiatus I return to my questions: Why and how should a Christian pursue athletic greatness? Or, as a Christian, how can I justify my drive to become the best athlete I can be? (If you haven’t been following along, you can follow my outline here.)

I have said a lot so far and today finally come to the last of six points.

6) A Christian should joyfully pursue athletic greatness with utmost diligence and utmost humility.

I believe I will be able to cover this point in two posts. Today we will focus on pursuing athletic greatness with ‘utmost diligence.’ Two things in particular stand out to me.

a) God is honored by a diligent pursuit of excellence.

b) Our diligence in pursuit of athletic excellence must not lead us to neglect diligence everywhere else.

Regarding the first point, I am confident I have already laid the foundation for such a statement, particularly in points 1-4. For if you recall, I said that the Lord created us not simply to sit around and enjoy His creation (in a lazy fashion), but to continue His creative work by developing all the creative potential within his creation. Naturally, that call to creatively develop the potential within creation included developing the potential we possess to create and participate in sport.

As it relates to your own life, we can say that the Lord is honored when you do all you can to develop the natural abilities He has given you, and all you can to take advantage of the opportunities He has given you to become your athletic best. For it is not enough to have natural abilities. You also must have the opportunities to develop them. So if He has given you both, He is honored by your diligent efforts to be faithful with the raw materials He has given you. He is honored by your diligent pursuit to become your best.

And I trust it is obvious to us all that in order to actually become the best you can be, you must be diligent. Sporadic or half-hearted, inconsistent efforts won’t get you very far. If you want to genuinely be faithful with the gifts and opportunities the Lord has given you, you must put in the time, and you must do so diligently. This is true in any walk of life and especially true in sport.

True as it is, however, I believe this emphasis upon diligence must be kept in perspective by my second point: Our diligence in pursuit of athletic excellence must not lead us to neglect diligence everywhere else. For underlying this point is the conviction that although God delights in our pursuit of athletic greatness, He doesn’t want this pursuit to become the whole of our lives. He doesn’t want this one pursuit to consume us and define us. Sure, He delights in diligence, but not in a diligence that leads us to neglect the rest of life. Proper perspective is key.

What this actually means practically will vary from person to person and even with a person’s particular season of life. For as I trust you can easily imagine, what such a reality meant for me as a 16 year-old naturally is different from what it means for me now. Not only that, but what it means for different people will depend upon their differing gifts and opportunities. Our pursuits will not all look the same.

No matter who we are or where we are in life, however, we are wise to be on our guard against allowing one pursuit to swallow up all others. No doubt, there will be costs. There always are. If we are to pursue excellence in one area, we will assuredly have a hard time pursuing excellence in another. We are all limited by time and space and opportunity. And that is ok, provided our priorities are straight and the right realities in center view.

Considering this, I should also say that as we are wise to guard ourselves from becoming consumed with one area of excellence, we must also be diligent to resist drawing up legalistic standards for what the pursuit of excellence should look like. You know, the kind of standards that spell out exactly what you should and should not sacrifice for one kind of pursuit (whether that pursuit is athletic greatness or pastoral greatness or even motherly greatness for that matter). Such legalistic standards are not helpful, for the issue is always in the heart. And because this is so, how greatness ought to be pursued should be discerned on a case by case basis, with the help of others who know us well and who guard themselves from giving easy answers.

As always I could go on, but suffice it to say that although the diligent pursuit of greatness is a good thing, it is not so good that it is worth whatever the cost. So be diligent, but do so in light of God’s heart and His priorities for your own life and the rest of the world. Remember the big picture. For only then can your diligent pursuit honor God, serve others, and genuinely thrive as the Lord intends.