Time Travel at the Mount

A light drizzle at the Mount didn’t stop 7 PAX from getting up early to get better. It’s 5:30, and all of us are regulars, so YHC jumps into the warm-up. And by “jump”, YHC means “side-straddle hops in cadence”:

Warm-up:

• 12 Side-straddle Hops in cadence
• 12 Humpies in cadence
• 12 Small Arm Circles in cadence
• 12 Reverse Arm Circles in cadence
• 12 Imperial Storm Troopers in cadence
• 12 Windmills in cadence.

THE CLOCK

Then we mosey to “THE CLOCK”, aka Trinity Ridge. Sunday, while planning for this morning, YHC realized it was the 12th of February. 12 is a good number for reps, so YHC wanted to do something with that. Then YHC realized that Trinity Ridge has sidewalks from its building connecting to the road that surrounds it. How many of these connections are there, you ask? (Since I assume you’d ask a question like that, obviously.) Twelve. What also has 12 of a thing in a circle? Another good question. A clock. Trinity Ridge is just a big clock. My workout planned itself. 12 reps at the top, mosey to the next sidewalk connection (counter-clockwise), 11 reps, mosey to the next connection, 10, etc, etc, until we reach 1 (o’clock) and then the top again for the next exercise. My weinke included 12 exercises following this pattern, but YHC completely underestimated how long it would take to do 78 burpees, et al, so we made it through a total of 4 exercises before heading back to the flag:

• 78 Burpees
• 78 Jump Squats
• 78 Peter Parkers
• 78 Merkins plus a single arm-raise side-plank between each push-up, alternating sides. (Is there an F3 name for this exercise? YHC seems to drone a long explanatory word list every time he calls this one.)

Checked an actual clock after the fourth exercise (two days back in time for those following the pattern) and it was 6:12. Time to mosey back to the flag.

COT

Count-o-rama, Name-o-rama:

Everyone shared news and prayer requests, then YHC shared a few small excerpts from “Union with Christ” by Rankin Wilbourne. This book has been working through me in a good way.

Wise spiritual counselors give us conflicting advice about the root of the problem and the way to move forward. In the main, there are two dominant voices on offer today—one we will call the way of extravagant grace, “just believe,” and the other we’ll call the way of radical discipleship, “just obey.”

 

Not that anyone wants to pit these voices against each other, but we often can’t help but hear them as two different songs playing in our heads.

 

Imagine each of these songs with its own volume knob. As we turn up the volume on one, we often instinctively turn down the volume on the other. Or, if we try to hear them both simultaneously, we may think we have to listen to each at half-volume. We seek some balance and wonder how to hold these melodies together in harmony.

 

This isn’t an academic question. It has everything to do with how we live, how we pray, what we think of when we think about God, and therefore how (and how often) we approach him….

 

… But for my part, I lacked a category to hold these voices together: the gospel of extravagant grace that requires nothing from us and the gospel of radical discipleship that demands everything of us.

 

Which is it: come and rest or come and die?…

 

… We know it doesn’t have to be either/or. We know both of these messages are thoroughly biblical and sorely needed (Matt. 11:28–30; Luke 9:23). And we can see how either message by itself can be dangerous. The call to be radical can make you exhausted, but the call to be ordinary can make you apathetic….

 

… How do we walk along the apex of the roof without falling off on either side—into “the danger of cheap grace” or “the danger of salvation through works”? Put another way, how do we close the gap between the life the Bible talks about and the lives we know?

 

Extravagant grace and radical discipleship meet in the person of Jesus himself. After all, wasn’t this the man who welcomed prostitutes yet who told his own disciples that to entertain a lustful look was to have “already committed adultery” (Matt. 5:28)? Wasn’t this the man who dined with tax collectors yet told his own, “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off” (Matt. 5:30)? Undiluted grace and uncompromising obedience meet in the person of Jesus. He is always full of both.

YHC prayed us out; SYITG!