Breakfast of Champions

 For lack of discipline they will die, led astray by their own great folly.

– Proverbs 5:23

Legend has it that about 500 years before Jesus proclaimed the Good News, a professional courier named Pheidippides completed the world’s first marathon. Following the Greek army’s decisive victory over the Persians at Marathon, he was dispatched to share the good news with the people of Athens. Pheidippides faithfully ran more than 20 miles to his destination. And after announcing, “Rejoice, we are victorious,” he dropped dead from exhaustion.

These days, thousands of runners compete in marathons all over the globe. And many of them prepare by adhering to a special diet to carry them over the finish line. In her Runners World magazine article titled The Healthy Runner’s Diet, Liz Applegate recommends a regimen

of seeds, fruits and vegetables, plant foods with their skins intact, milk and milk products, meat, foods originating from cold water (like fish and other seafood), plus poultry or eggs from free-range or grass-fed animals. These powerful foods, says Dr. Applegate, promote good health and peak athletic performance for long-distance runners. And what many marathoners well-know is that eating the wrong foods can mean the difference between victory and dropping out of contention with miles still left to go.

This principle also applies to Christ-followers. After all, our faith-journey isn’t a sprint or even a jog. Instead, it’s a long-distance adventure that’s in many ways a marathon. But the similarities end when it comes to food. And not so much with physical nourishment, but spiritual fuel. As Christ-followers, we want our lives to produce the fruit of the Holy Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. But if we’re constantly feeding ourselves with negative influences — such as poor choices in relationships and entertainment — we shouldn’t be surprised if we follow our old sinful natures from time to time. Expressions of jealousy, bitterness and frustration are common examples of what can happen when we’re not consuming the right spiritual foods to go the distance.

As the Apostle Paul explained to the Galatians, “Our sinful selves want what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit wants what is against our sinful selves. The two are against each other, so you cannot do just what you please.”

It’s obvious that every Christ-follower — just like every participant in the Boston Marathon — must prepare for the long and demanding race ahead of them. And rather than carb-loading to maximize our muscles’ energy storage, we need to follow a determined spiritual regimen that will help see us to victory.

A good way to start is with constant prayer and a continual awareness that we can’t make it without the Holy Spirit living within us. And rather than living one day at a time, proceed moment-by-moment. Second, let’s deliberately filter our thinking. Do the movies we watch, the websites we visit and the friends we make feed our spirit or our sinful nature? Finally, we need to die to ourselves every day by constantly scanning for traps and obstacles in our lives that could run us off the track. In 2 Timothy, Paul writes that his spiritual diet and rigorous training paid off for his faith-journey:

“I have fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith. At last the champion’s wreath that is awarded for righteousness is waiting for me. The Lord, who is the righteous judge, is going to give it to me on that day. He’s giving it not only to me but also to all those who have set their heart on waiting for his appearance.”

Whether you’re a brand-new Christ-follower or a longtime believer, the old saying is true: You are what you eat. And in that grueling marathon called life, maintaining your discipline and making wise choices will help take you across the finish line.