Training over trying is a maxim of Christian spiritual formation. 

The idea is that each of us can become the kind of person who does good naturally. This happens not by sheer willpower and grit (“trying”) but by God’s grace transforming our habits of body and mind through intentional spiritual practice (“training”). 

Sounds good. Sign me up. 

But it turns out this kind of inner transformation takes a really long time. Like a lifetime. Usually longer.

Thus the reason for Dan’s excellent question for our Friends in Formation podcast:

While we are cooperating in this spiritual formation project into Christlikeness, what is the role of obedience — simply gritting our teeth and doing it (or not doing it as the case may be)? What role does this kind of willful obedience have in our ultimate reformation while we wait for the slow process of inside out change?

The discussion on the episode is excellent, so I won’t spoil it. I’ll just pass along a few thoughts of my own. 

First, let there be no doubt that following Jesus requires obedience. I almost said demands, but words carry images and for me the word demand carries the image of a perfectionist parent or exacting drill sergeant. Picture instead Jesus with the rich young ruler. Before asking him to sell everything and give to the poor, ​“Jesus looked at him and loved him” (Mark 10:21). The obedience Jesus asks of us is not an arbitrary test of allegiance but an invitation from a heart of love for the sake of our flourishing. 

Second, obedience means using willpower. It means having grit. But as any woodworker will tell you, the kind of grit you use makes all the difference. If a heavy grade is used in the wrong way, or for too long, you can do some serious damage.

Jesus asks all of us to do hard things — some general, some specific — and obedience means we must choose at some cost to actually do those things. Over the long haul, his yoke should be easy and light (Matt. 11:30). If it isn’t, we’re carrying it wrong. Even so, it still has weight so it takes some effort. But most of our effort should be to put ourselves into the yoke where Christ does the heavy lifting. 

Enough metaphors. Let’s bring this down into real life. 

A few years ago, I sensed the Lord inviting me to record some new songs. I had, in fact, sensed this invitation for many years but had put it off for lots of good reasons that sounded very spiritual. My first act of obedience, then, was to book time at the studio. That sounds easy enough, but if you’ve ever taken some step toward what you feel God is asking you to do — put in a resignation, talked to a leader about starting a new program, whatever — you know the monstrous resistance that can arise inside. 

Anyhow, on the day before I was to start recording, I awoke with a debilitating despair. I’d been sad before; this was different. I found it physically difficult to get out of bed. Those with clinical depression know what I’m talking about. (And I must note that what follows is in no way a prescription for ​“snapping out of it.” Any idea that one can just snap out of depression or anything else long bound up in our bodies is an attempt to apply the wrong kind of grit.) 

Laying in bed I felt God’s invitation: pick up your guitar and sing. Playing and singing, if I could even do anything, were the last things I wanted to do. It took grit to get up and get the guitar out of the case and strum a few chords and sing a new song. This was not the grit of a man determined to fix himself. It was the grit of the blind man in Luke’s Gospel who, despite the crowd telling him to shut up, kept yelling, ​“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” It was the grit of the bleeding woman in Matthew’s Gospel who pushed her way through a crowd and risked becoming an outcast just to reach out and touch the hem of the Master’s robe.

As I played and sang, a weight lifted off my chest. I put the guitar back in the case and drove to the studio.

So to Dan’s question, yes, there’s a time to grit your teeth and just do it, so long as it’s the right kind of grit. I’d call it a willing obedience, an active determination to surrender oneself time and again into the hands of a loving God.