Trying Too Hard
I played football in High School. Before the jokes start, I admit it: I wasn’t very good. I probably had no business being on the field, but I grew up in Texas, and in Texas you play football in High School.
One of my many problems is that I weighed 140 pounds and played on the offensive line. When I lined up across from those big boys on the other side, some of them weighing more than a refrigerator, I just couldn’t stop them. The best I could do was to cut their legs out from under them.
Why would a coach put a little fella like me on the line? I couldn’t catch a football. I was fast enough, but I didn’t have the hands. The ball slipped through my fingers as if I had just polished off a big bag of popcorn, extra butter.
Before the coach finally moved me to third string guard, I was with the receivers one day when one of my teammates gave me some of the best advice I have ever heard. I had just bungled another pass and was headed to the back of the line when he said:
Kizer, you try too hard.
“Try too hard?” Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do—try hard?
But he was right. Athletes talk about the “flow” or “getting into the zone,” that mental state in which the muscle memory takes over and you’re relaxed and confident and your body does whatever you tell it. You can’t get into the zone when you’re overanalyzing everything. It’s almost impossible to do anything right when you’re trying so hard not to do anything wrong.
One time I heard a coach say that to be successful, you’ve got to be hard on yourself in practice and easy on yourself in the game. If you’re having to try hard during the game, you haven’t come prepared to win. No amount of effort will help you.
The problem of trying too hard afflicts our spiritual lives too. Unwilling to accept our sinfulness, many of us try hard to be good, to follow all the rules, to be better than others, to impress God with our service. When we take this approach, our religion becomes stern, judgmental, and lifeless. There’s no joy in it. And even if we are “doing everything right,” we are still haunted by a sense of guilt and shame.
No matter how hard you try, you cannot make up for the sins you have committed. There are not enough good deeds in the world to change the past. We cannot make ourselves good. The harder we try, the worse it gets.
The gospel is the only remedy for sin. It says that, through Christ, God will show mercy on us and save us by grace, although we do not deserve it. Ephesians 2:8-9 reads, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
If you go to church and pray and read your Bible, but you are still struggling to find happiness and peace, the problem may be that you’re just trying too hard. You cannot save yourself. Jesus is your Savior. Quit trying so hard and put your soul in his hands, and then you will find peace.
Drew Kizer