Mastering the Fundamentals

You can’t succeed in sports without mastering the fundamentals. The same is true of our spiritual lives.

When I was growing up, I was very active in sports. From the age of 7, I played several different sports, starting with basketball and baseball.

First the fundamentals

When you first start to learn any sport, such as basketball or baseball, you must begin by learning the fundamentals. The fundamentals are the basic principles that you build off of.

With basketball, you begin with the lay-up. Once you have that and all the other fundamentals down, you can eventually move to dunking (assuming, of course, you can jump that high). With baseball you begin with fielding a grounder and making the out at first. You have to master that before you can move on to turning a double play.

I remember as a child practicing lay-ups and grounders for hours. For basketball, I was told to make 100 lay-ups in a row without missing. If I missed one, I had to start all over. For baseball, every grounder I missed resulted in a quick run to a tree and back.

Why did I have to do these things? First, it was to develop the skills to succeed in these areas. After all, “repetition is the mother of success.” Second, the life lesson is that the fundamentals are extremely important and the hard work of practice and preparation pays off.

I spent many hours getting these basics down, and the preparation paid off as I went on to play several years of basketball and baseball, as well as tennis and football. Of course, I didn’t go pro in any sport, but the pros also had to learn the basics. Had they not, they would not be at the level they are at today.

The point is, if you don’t get the fundamentals right, the rest is useless. If you can do an amazing dunk but can’t rebound, pass or shoot free throws, no team will want you.

God’s fundamentals

God also reminds us of the importance of mastering the fundamentals of His way of life. Hebrews 5:12-14 chides those who have failed to remember the foundational biblical truths:

“For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.”

In verse 12, the milk refers to the fundamental principles such as repentance, faith, baptism, receiving God’s Spirit and understanding God’s plan for mankind (Hebrews 6:1-2). We cannot grow any further until we have really digested the milk and strengthened ourselves through spiritual exercise. Only then can we move on to the solid spiritual food.

We have to exercise our senses. The Greek for “exercise” (gymnazō) is the root of the English word “gymnastics.” Exercising our senses is not a spectator sport but a personal involvement in spiritual gymnastics.We have to practice looking at situations and determining what is good and evil, then choosing the good. Sometimes we will make mistakes and pay for our bad choices. But if we keep at it and don’t give up, someday we’ll be able to throw down some righteous slam dunks and some awesome spiritual double plays.

Johnathan Armstrong attends the Little Rock, Arkansas, congregation of the Church of God, a Worldwide Association, and is a graduate student working on his doctorate in physics.

Other posts by Johnathan Armstrong:

• Science Can't Fix Our Problems
• Understanding Purity and Impurity
• Avoiding Spiritual Calluses