Rhythms of Resilience
When I was in high school I got fixated on the sport of boxing. I’m not sure if it was because I was the shortest kid in my grade so I felt like I had to constantly defend myself, or if it was because I thought it would help me get a six-pack, but that’s besides the point. I used to train multiple times every week, and watch YouTube videos of professional fighters to learn whatever I could from them. The thing that always impressed me most about them was their ability to get back up after being knocked down. After taking blow upon blow to the head or body, and finally being brought to their knees, somehow they often had the ability to rise to their feet and continue to fight again.
The world resilient means to be able to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. It brings to mind the image of a boxer rising to their feet again after being knocked down, continuing to persevere under difficult circumstances. When it comes to being a Christian in today’s world—resilience is certainly something we need. There are so many things that compete for our attention, worldviews and ideologies that seek to persuade us away from the authority of the Scriptures, and hardships that will cause us to question our faith. Resilience is a crucial characteristic to following Jesus for the long-haul. The Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy near the end of his own life, declaring that ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith (2 Timothy 4:7).’ If we want to be able to echo these words of Paul’s, we need to develop rhythms that will enable that kind of resilience.
Over the last decade the Barna Group has conducted research into what is helping young Christians stick with their faith in turbulent times. They called those that continue to follow Jesus as ‘resilient disciples’—which meant at a minimum they attended church at least monthly, engage in church life outside of services, trust firmly in the authority of Scripture, are committed to Jesus personally and affirm his death and resurrection, and express a desire to transform society as an outcome of their faith. They then compared these ‘resilient disciples’ with other categories of Christians, such as habitual churchgoers, on a range of aspects regarding their faith.
In ‘Faith for Exiles’, the book that presents the culmination of this research, we’re presented with the findings that those who are resilient in their faith are twice as likely as habitual churchgoers to strongly agree that ‘reading the Bible makes me feel closer to God’. They’re also nearly twice as likely to feel re-energised by spending time with God, and spend twice as much time taking in spiritual content each year compared to others who attend church regularly. And 64% of these resilient disciples strongly agree that ‘prayer does not feel like a formal routine but a vibrant part of my life’, compared with 39% of habitual churchgoers.
While the research touches on other factors too, it’s worth pausing and considering the implications of these facts alone. In a world overloaded with incoming information, updates on never-ending global issues, and rhetoric that pulls us further from the way of Jesus—one of the strongest remedies is simply to continue to spend time being re-energised by God, in His word, through prayer and by consistently taking time to renew and fill our minds with the knowledge of Jesus.
If you want to fight the good fight, then develop rhythms that will help you to be resilient. Don’t wait until you’re struggling with your faith to put them into practice, act now. When you get knocked down by difficult questions from your friends or colleagues, being able to depend on God in prayer will help you to stand again. When suffering hits you hard, and it will at some stage of life, spending time reading God’s word will allow His open arms to comfort you and lift you to your feet. When the busyness of life and the stress of raising kids, navigating your workplace or juggling competing priorities has you feeling cornered—meeting regularly with brothers and sisters and continuing to practice sabbath will lift your eyes above the struggles to gaze upon the goodness of your Saviour.
The Christian life is a bumpy ride, and there’ll be plenty of times when you get knocked down. But they’re precisely the moments that your rhythms were built for, because they’re God’s gifts of grace that help you to be resilient and get back up in the strength of Jesus.
