Lessons Learned from the Sports World - The Winter Olympics

'These guys are a different breed', the NBC news anchor reported. I agree. Anyone who is willing to strap two boards of slippery plastic on to his or her feet and go down a sheer slope of snow that is packed as hard as concrete at speeds in excess of 70 miles an hour, or, with the same slippery plastic boards throw themselves off a jump and 460 feet down a mountain, is different from me.

There is one more thing that separates these people from the average Joe.
Simon Ammann and Bode Miller both have it. They are men who do what I mention above. Ammann became a celebrity when 8 years ago as a very young competitor he won gold and his high pitched shrieks of youthful excitement endeared him to many, especially his home nation of Switzerland.
Both Miller and Ammann had gone to the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics expecting to do well. Both failed miserably winning nothing. 4 years of preparation amounted to nothing.
Most of us would have been so dissappointed we would have most likely given up. But Miller and Ammann kept working on their craft. For 4 years they worked hard and with great determination to bring about different results in Vancouver in 2010.
As you have probably seen Ammann won Gold in the Ski Jumping with a jump 21 feet longer than his closest opponent. Miller took Gold in the Super Combined last night after he already had won 2 medals in this Olympics.
This type of perseverance is incredible. The commitment to a cause over many years for literally moments on the slopes with the hope of getting it all right on the night and to win Gold.
They certainly did not grow weary and give up. I am sure there were times when they wanted to.
They moved forward with perseverance.
And yet their cause was merely a Gold medal.

My desire is that I will have a level of perseverance similar to this.
That I will be so driven by the cause of Christ that I will not give up, no matter what happens.
That it is Christians who are described as a 'different breed' because of our commitment and perseverance to the cause.

'....and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.' Heb 12v3
'.... stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.'
1Cor 15v58