Train Yourself

“Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. That is why we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe.” – 1 Timothy 4:7-10 NIV

It often feels like I am always trying to be better, continuously striving to improve on something. For the most part, we all are. This isn’t a bad thing, but it can be when our focus isn’t on Jesus. It is an awesome thing to land that trick you’re working on for the first time or to clean up sloppy form. However, our primary focus and desire for improvement should be on our relationship with Christ. We have put our hope and trust in Jesus, and that, therefore, is why we must strive to be more like Him, training ourselves to be godly.

What does training yourself to be godly even look like? The first thing I think about is being grounded in Christ and his teachings. Personal bible studies are incredibly helpful with this. In Acts 17, the Bereans were seen as having more “noble character” because of how they examined the scriptures with eagerness and sought out truth. In 2 Timothy, we are encouraged to continue in what we have learned and grow in our conviction of these things, knowing that the scriptures help us to become wiser, and they are useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness in order to do God’s work (2 Timothy 3:14-17).

Secondly, we must follow the example of Jesus’s prayer life. I once read a quote that said, “Prayer is the breath of God in man.” It is how we personally connect and talk to God. Jesus was always retreating somewhere to pray or running off to mountain tops to pray (Mark 1:35, Matthew 14:23, Luke 6:12). Man, I swear Jesus must be like a hiking pro, he was always climbing those mountains to pray. It is so important that our prayer life doesn’t consist of just fortune cookie prayers but of genuine time connecting to our Father.

Amongst these things, we must produce fruit in keeping with repentance (Matthew 3:8). Given the gift of grace, we must be consistent in repentance, recognizing our brokenness and faultiness before God, remaining humble to him, and recognizing our constant need for our Savior.

In our goal to train ourselves to be more godly, we must be consistent in the Word, consistent in prayer, and consistent in repentance.

By Eunice Bartlett | Lincoln, NH