Artie Sposaro

I started wrestling in junior high school. I learned quickly that it’s not easy to walk out on a mat all alone and wrestle another person. It’s easy for fear and panic to get the best of you. This being said, I did okay those first years with a few basic moves and brute strength. When I got to high school this method would no longer work. I had to learn to wrestle well if I was going to win…or even survive.

Wrestling in everyday life reflects my Jr. high wrestling experience. It takes courage to step out take on life. It’s easy to let fear and panic get the best of us. We wrestle our anxieties, and by using a few basic moves and brute strength we get by. But this is no way to live. We recognize that to thrive in life we’ve got to get better at wrestling.

I had great wrestling coaches in high school. I got better at wrestling by listening and responding to my coaches. More specifically, I did well because I learned to rest. By rest I don’t mean being lazy. I mean rest as relaxed trust. I dropped my fear and panic and learned to trust my coaches and my God-given abilities. During matches I wrestled and listened carefully to my coaches simultaneously. I trusted them and all that I had learned from them.

Many of us don’t realize that God desires for us to rest. God wants us to trust him completely. He provides us his Spirit to teach, coach, and empower us as we wrestle whatever we face in life. We’re not meant to live in fear and panic. God longs for us to rest in him. As a matter of fact, he commands it. Anything else is disobedience.

You may remember the biblical telling of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. They were bound for a Promised Land, a land of milk and honey. When they came to the edge of the land that God said was theirs for the taking, they sent twelve spies inside to check it out. Ten spies returned frightened by the prospects of entering the land. To the contrary, Caleb and Joshua trusted in God’s promised rest and lobbied for entry. Refusing to rest in God’s promise, the Israelites turned back to the wilderness where they roamed for another forty years. Tragic.

The writer of Hebrews revisits this ordeal in light of God’s doings through Jesus. He tells the Hebrews to make every effort – be diligent, eager – to enter God’s rest. Trust God with everything as a way of life. Anything else mirrors the disobedience of the Israelites, a waywardness that leads to wilderness wandering.

We are meant to wrestle at rest. When I wrestled I was exerting myself completely but also at rest. I was fully engaged with my opponent and tuned in to my coaches’ voices. Notably, the word rest resides in the center of the word wrestle. Whatever the landscape of our life, it is a Promised Land. He lives, moves, and has life within us. In every location God implores us to listen, respond, and rest. Walk forward into the land with peace rather than panic.

God encourages you wrestle to rest. Shuck anything that prevents you from trusting God with everything. Rest is God’s gift to you. It’s your birthright. Don’t let life or your need to control everything steal your rest! The Spirit of the living God wrestles for you, through you, so you can rest in Him.

“Faith is a refusal to panic.” - Martyn Lloyd-Jones

A project I have been working on for the past four years has come to an end…or a new beginning. A book I’ve been writing since September of 2006 is finally on the market. It’s entitled Sacred Flow. The timing and the topic are a great match. The book encourages renewed focus and a flowing faith. This comes just in time for our annual reboot. The New Year’s reboot can be refreshing, daunting, or both. I hope the concept of sacred flow will inspire you to flow into this New Year, undaunted.

Sacred flow integrates flow, a sought after peak-experience, with the Christian faith in order to foster a faith that flows. Like athletes fluidly performing with extraordinary grace, I believe God designed us to gracefully move in His Spirit.

Most of us have some experience with flow. The flow experience is an oasis characterized by fluid connection with whatever we are doing. To describe flow we typically use the expression the zone. All of us have experienced flow at some level through competition, intense conversation, absorption in work, or while engaging in a hobby. While flowing, both our sense of self-consciousness and self-effort fade. We float; totally engrossed in our activity. A flowing faith embodies these same characteristics.

Flow leads us into the rhythm of God’s Spirit through focus, challenge, and feedback. Jesus modeled focus, challenge, and feedback. He focused on God and the moment. He embraced challenges continually. And he always followed the feedback his Father offered. These particular roots lay the groundwork for flow and daily Christian spirituality.

Focus. To flow is to focus. It’s crucial that we fully give ourselves to God and whatever we are doing. Seeking God’s kingdom means seeking God in each moment, each day, whatever we are doing. We needn’t waste a moment obsessing over the past or the future, we’re meant to give our full attention to today. Of course, we will continually wrestle with distraction and doubt. But we can trust that God will continually draw our attention back to him. We’ve been given the opportunity to flow with God into the here and now, whatever its content.

Challenge. Challenges nurture flow. Life brings us challenges and we have many opportunities to challenge ourselves. Daily we are challenged to live deeply focused upon God and whatever the moment entails. Since God is love, the predominant challenge of our life is to love as God loves. Embracing this challenge and every other challenge becomes a way of life in a flowing faith.

Feedback. Being responsive sets the stage for us to flow with God continuously. God serves up feedback from within and without. God may use practically anything to speak to us. God’s feedback is not always welcome or easy to detect and follow, but it’s essential nonetheless. We need to remain open, alert, pliable, and responsive. Ultimately, God’s feedback always leads us to love. If we aren’t receiving God’s love and loving in return, then we aren’t listening to God.

Sacred flow invites us to ebb and flow in God’s Spirit. It promotes an active faith absorbed in and empowered by God’s indwelling presence. It inspires an intense intimacy with God that makes loving God and others come more naturally. You can’t escape the harsh realities of life in this or any other year, but you can deal with them differently. As life brings you difficult challenges you can flow through them with God.

You can purchase Sacred Flow: Discovering Life in the Divine Current at www.thesacredflow.com, www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, and www.booksamillion.com.

This time of year I often hear people bemoan Christ being removed from Christmas. “Happy Holidays” gets under their skin. Ifrequently hear statements like, “Keep Christ in Christmas” and “Jesus is the reason for the season.” Over the past twenty years or so in American society, the ‘Christ’ in Christmas has been more and more minimized. The separation of church and state debate and rampant consumerism have influenced the amount of Christ in our Christmas. Understandably, this change has frustrated scores of Christians.

Restoring Christ to Christmas is easier than we think. In reality, only we can take the Christ out of our Christmas. What happens (or doesn’t happen anymore) on the public square needn’t affect our Christmas.

Christmas is an inside job. It’s an incarnation celebration. To incarnate means to give a bodily or concrete form to, especially human form. Christmas celebrates God physically coming to be present with us, among us. Through Jesus, a God who was already near miraculously became a living, breathing local. Jesus modeled for us the best of humanity and later died to save it. His presence is certainly worth celebrating. Christmas incarnation made the way for another. We’re meant to embody the Christ of Christmas.

To incarnate Christ means to allow the Spirit of Christ to live in and through us. This is the central ideal of the Christian faith.We do this by trusting in God as Jesus did. He trusted God for everything, even which words to say. In doing so, we give bodily, concrete, or tangible form to God in the here and now. No, this doesn’t make us divine, but it makes us bearers of divinity. The light of Christmas means to shine in and through us.

There are several ways in which our presence gives tangible expression to the Christmas presence. Primarily, our presence expresses Christ’s when it gives off love, life, hope, and peace.

Jesus, the Christmas presence, loves deeply. Above all else, we’re meant to love God and our neighbor as ourselves. To love means to give. We give ourselves. Loving means advocating for others as we would for ourselves. Giving form to God means giving form to love.

Jesus is a life-giving presence. His life brought God’s life to us. Wherever he went he offered life. Our lives may do this as well. To incarnate Christ means that our life breathes life into others’ lives. As life-givers, when people see us from afar, rather than avoid us, they seek us out. Our presence is desirable and contagious.

The Christmas presence offers hope. Jesus redeems and recovers us. He sets things right. Unthinkable change becomes a reality. He restores humanity to truth, beauty, and goodness. Following his lead, we’re meant to act as ministers of reconciliation, ambassadors of restorative hope.

Jesus is the prince of peace. He makes real peace possible. Everyone needs peace. Jesus offers us his peace, “Peace be with you, my peace I give you.” We certainly need peace in the midst of a harried Christmas season. Possessing God’s peace, we incarnate Christ by offering it to others.

Keeping Christ in Christmas means choosing to let our presence continually radiate his presence. Don’t let any disappointment you have with culture sour your Christmas. Incarnate Christ. Allow the Spirit of Christmas to live in and through you. This way you’ll give Christmas presence year round. Love, breathe life, exude hope, and offer peace. Merry Christmas!

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. – Isaiah 9: 6

This post was published in the Henry County Times, 12/15/10