When five-time Olympic champion Ian Thorpe retired from competitive swimming at the age of 24 he said, “breaking records wasn’t as inspiring as it should have been.” As a teenager, Thorpe splashed into the swimming scene and swam to 13 world records from 1999 to 2002, becoming an international star after dominating at the Sydney Olympics.

Even with all the success, he realized the medals, titles, records, and accomplishments did not last long. The fans went home. The cameras were turned off. And Ian was left with an empty feeling that success cannot fill. The external stuff fades quickly. It is never enough.

In the ancient Middle East, there were three ways to obtain water. Digging a well was one way; carving out a cistern was another. Both required hard work and human energy. The third way came naturally, up through the earth, when a spring of water bubbled to the surface. We find in Scripture that such a spring became a picture of God’s grace and provision. Jesus told the woman at the well, “The water I will give him will become like a well of water springing up within him for eternal life” (John 4:14b).

This is an agonizing time of the year for college football coaches and fans. Star high school athletes are making decisions that will determine where they will spend the next four years of their lives. They are taking official visits to college campuses around the country and are being given the royal treatment. Each school hopes that the recruit will commit to signing with them, and many do long before the official signing date. Even with commitments declared, college coaches continue to pursue these athletes, causing some to change their minds and sign with other schools. Recruits can state that they are a "soft" commitment to a school and continue to make visits to other campuses.

A while ago, our baseball team played an opponent we should have probably defeated, but we made some costly errors. The following day I was doing my devotion from “The Daily Light Journal” by Anne Graham Lotz. The title was “The Fruit of the Spirit Is…Joy.” That prompted me to think about the joys that had come through even in our team’s struggles: the salvation of a teammate, the development of many young players, the ability to lose and continue to practice hard. The list goes on and on.

Young people today are commonly confused by discipline, seeing it as punishment rather than a virtue needed to train effectively. The will or discipline of a competitor can be seen in how he/she perseveres through tough times.

A college coach once said, “The will to succeed is important, but what’s more important is the will to prepare.” As coaches, we do everything we can to make sure our teams are prepared for the game. We give them training, exercise, motivation, uniforms, and equipment. We want them to succeed and win when they face the opponent. Nothing would be worse than to show up to face an opponent without being prepared.

Maybe it’s my athletic background as a player and as a coach, but there is  something in me that dislikes the word quit. Of course, at one time or another in our lives, we have all had to face that word in choices we have made. There will always be difficult circumstances in life—some so bad that it is hard to see an answer. It is at those moments that we are faced with the alternative of quitting. The world would make that choice easy, asking,“If you don’t like the way things are going, why don’t you just quit?” It applies to our marriages, our relationships, our jobs, and even to our faith.

I am training for a marathon—a grueling task that is even more difficult because I’m training alone. Some training runs have been up to 18 miles—all on my own. When I run it’s just me, the trail, and my MP3 player. Before I decided to do the marathon I told God I wanted to run for His glory. With a month of training to go, I realized something had become all too familiar to me. Even when I didn’t have on headphones, I was singing in my head. I had been listening to my MP3 so often that the songs were in my mind all the time. When I focused on the words, I realized something was wrong.