God's Coaching #264

God's Coaching #264

Have you ever tried to walk with swim flippers on your feet? It’s not very easy to do. In fact, you are almost guaranteed to fall if you try it. Running in flippers is even harder. But running and jumping over obstacles in flippers? Well, that’s just downright impossible. It would be silly to even try. But that didn’t stop Maren Zonker.

In 2008, Maren, a woman from Germany, set a Guinness World Record by completing the fastest 100-meter hurdles race . . . while wearing swim fins on her feet. Her world-record time was 22.35 seconds, more than twice as slow as the world record for the normal 100-meter hurdles. Talk about flipping out.

What’s the Score?

Why, you might wonder, did Maren Zonker try to tackle this unique feat with flippered feet? Good question. The 100-meter hurdles and swim flippers don’t really seem to go well together, do they? The hurdles are an Olympic race that tests speed and agility. Swim fins help scuba divers swim well underwater and make people look like ducks. And our web-footed friends weren’t really meant to run the 100-meter hurdles.

There are some things that shouldn’t be mixed. It’s kind of like that in our spiritual lives. God calls Christians to be different from the world—meaning Christians are supposed to be easily distinguished from non-Christians by how they think, act, and speak. If we go to church, read our Bibles, and pray on Sundays, but then use bad language, disobey our parents, and get into fights the rest of the week, how are we different from people who don’t know Jesus? Instead we should follow Christ’s example and be different from the world. Because, after all, just like hurdles and flippers, godliness and worldliness don’t mix.

On the Ball

List three ways you struggle with worldliness and pray for God’s help to change:

1.

2.

3.

Coach’s Comment

Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. 1 John 2:15