The Mushy Middle & the Misery of 'partially following' Christ

In triathlon training there is a concept that many athletes fall prey too known as the mushy middle. The concept is this...your body needs two things in order to improve fitness...hard training and rest. So every training session should either be intense, designed to stretch the limits of the body or it should be rest, designed to keep blood flowing through the body but not reaching the intensity level where the body will be broken down. The unproductive mushy middle lies in between. The body is not worked intensely enough to make gains but at the same time is worked to the point where rest in not given to the body in order to overcome fatigue and nagging injuries do not receive the down time that they require.

As much as I hate to admit it I find myself in the 'mushy middle' spiritually a lot of times. Jesus never called disciples to ‘kind of’ follow Him. He never invited anyone to ‘try Him out’. It was always all or nothing. And yet I find myself picking and choosing which areas of my life I am going to surrender to Him. There is no joy in that. Joy in following Christ always follows complete surrender. I hate riding in the center of a roller coaster. Put me in the very front where the view is the best or put me in the back where it will shake my gizzards out but not the middle. Spiritually the mushy middle is a miserable place to be. There is a time for rest and refreshment and there is a time for ‘going all out’ spiritually. Unfortunately many of us spend out time spinning our spiritual wheels doing neither. We want the best of both systems…spiritual and secular…so we receive neither.


tags: God triathlon fitness
Christianity spirituality