The Importance of GRIT
Today we’re beginning a summer series we’re calling GRIT. Earlier this year Angela Lee Duckworth was giving a TED TALK on “GRIT: The Power of Passion of Perseverance.” Angela was a high flying consultant who left her job and began teaching math, to seriously challenged kids, in the New York Public School System. She became fascinated with this question… “What makes some people, in super challenging environments, more successful than others?” Is it a stratospheric high IQ? It is social intelligence, family income, natural talent or ability, good looks, or physical health? It’s none of these.
Angela Duckworth says its GRIT.
“Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.”
(Source:: http://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance/transcript?language=en accessed June 18, 2016).
My favorite definition of GRIT is "disbelieving failure is a permanent condition." Grit is about learning and adapting… facing danger, growing through life’s challenges.
What defines King David wasn’t that he was strong, handsome, or intelligent. It’s that he was “a man after God’s own heart” (Acts 13:22). Despite his high and lows, his successes and dismal failures (i.e. moral failure, marital failure, parenting failures)… he was a man of gritty faith. This means David never gave up on God even though he had all the reasons in the world to give up on himself.
Yes, David did some extraordinary things. Yes he sinned, and lied, and failed in epic ways. But credit him this one thing… he was a man of gritty faith. He learned to trust God’s grace in every season and circumstance of life. Through the good, bad, and ugly he kept turning back to God.
What strikes me, is how quickly we let our failures (instead of God’s grace) define us. Instead of turning back to God, with gritty determination, again and again… we run from God, we attempt life w/o Him, we hide. What does it look like to find grace? To become a person of gritty faith? To be a man/woman after God’s own heart?
Something else that inspired this series is a song called “7 YEARS” by Lukas Graham, that’s been playing an awful lot on the radio. The song begins, “Once I was seven years old my momma told me… Go make yourself some friends or you'll be lonely… Once I was seven years old.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHCob76kigA
The song progresses through every stage of his life from seven, to eleven, to twenty, thirty, sixty years! Lukas was very close to his father, and he wrote this song after his father suddenly died of a heart attack at 61. I wonder what this song would be like if David were singing it about himself? “Once I was seven years old... Once I was eleven years old and…” What matters most across the whole span of a man’s life? For Lukas Graham its not being lonely… but for David it was learning to walk with God.
David learned to walk with God from an early age. I think if you are a young person you can learn a lot from David. Don’t be so eager to hit fast forward. Be patient and see how God is at work, forming you in your youth. If you are an older adult, you can reflect back, and marvel how God has used things that happened early on to shape the man or woman you are today. If you are a father, or parent, maybe you can appreciate how David’s father Jesse, made room for God to be at work in his son’s life. Some observations…
Grit is Embracing Obscurity
We know that David was born around 1040 B.C., in Bethlehem, which would have been a very small town, with just a handful of people. His father Jesse was a sheep breeder and farmer by trade. David was also the great great grandson of Boaz and Ruth. Remember how Boaz looked after Ruth and Naomi by letting them work in his fields? David’s family had been working the fields, and working with animals for generations. Another detail, David was the youngest of eight brothers.
If ever there was a young man who felt overlooked, or who felt his life was a dead end, it might have been David. Yet it’s in this small, remote village, in the overlooked fields, on the lonely hillsides of Bethlehem, that God is raising up David to be his man. With God, there are no small places, there are no dead ends. We fool ourselves if we think otherwise. Where did Jesus come from? Nazareth. Can anything good come from Nazareth? The fact that a person is the youngest, comes from a lowly background, or finds themselves in a small place in no way limits God. In fact, God purposely chooses the weak, the lowly, the small things for his noble purposes.
In obscurity we wait, we learn patience, we grow.
Grit is Embracing Responsibility
From a young age, Jesse gave young David real responsibility. He was asked to work in the fields. He was given a staff and told to watch over sheep. In the ancient world, there wasn’t much pampering going on like today. From an early age children were given real responsibility so they’d be prepared to live in an adult world. It didn’t matter that David was the youngest.
As a young person, my parents introduced me to responsibility early on. In addition to working at a factory, my dad had a small toy business. Many nights I’d work in the shop cutting, sanding, and assembling crafts and toys. Then I’d go to school, or to neighbors, and sell stuff for a small commission. During the summers, we were required to work in the garden, planting, cultivating, weeding, and harvesting. My sister helped mom can all the produce for use during winter. Throughout the year I literally ran a paper route, collecting fees door to door.
If I wanted a haircut, I’d pay for it myself. If I wanted new clothes, that’s what that money was for. It’s not that my parents weren’t ever generous, or didn’t buy me clothes, or shoes or whatever… it’s that they wanted me to embrace real world responsibility. Now maybe I had a little resentment, seeing my friends so spoiled. They didn’t have to work, they got most everything they wanted. But in retrospect… I definitely got the better deal.
Have you ever heard the expression faithful with little, faithful with much? That’s how God develops us. If you can learn to be responsible in little things, it gives you the capacity to be responsible for bigger things. Soon David would become King over all Israel… but first he had to care for handful sheep, in total obscurity.
Grit is Embracing Danger
We’ll talk more about this in a few weeks, but something we know about David is that he wasn’t sheltered from danger. Do you remember how in the story of Goliath, they ask David why he thinks he can take down Goliath? And David’s rather innocent response to Saul is (1 Samuel 17:34-37):
“Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, 35 I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. 36 Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. 37 The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.”
A few weeks ago some parents let their kid fall into a gorilla pit. Do you remember the story? The gorilla was dragging the kid around. I’m no advocating anyone feed their kids to the lions, or bears though you may be tempted. But wouldn’t you agree that so many young people are overly nurtured, overly protected, overly coddled? On our campuses students fly into a rage over slightly micro-aggressions. Why, because they’ve been protected from adversity their own whole life. In the words of Kelly Clarkson, they grew up on the safe-side of the sidewalk. Everything has warning.
Psychologist quite often use the term “Helicopter Parents.” Helicopter parents swoop down out of the sky, at the slightest sign of danger. If their child is being bullied at school. If their teacher or coach scolds them. If they get a bad grade or report. If the police shew a kid on for some offense… parents swoop down to intervene. The product of helicopter parenting is a child growing up possessing a fearful, disempowered, risk-adverse psychology.
I don’t get the impression that Jesse was a helicopter dad for David. But I also don’t get the impression he was negligent. He exposed David to real danger, real evil. In the face of danger David developed real world courage, real world faith, and had to overcome real world threats.
I remember as a child my mom and dad have a heated debate about whether to let us boys go down to Horse Creek unsupervised. My mom’s perspective was fear-based. You don’t know whose down there. There are poisonous snakes in the creek bed, and possums, and skunks, and wild animals. Who knows what chemicals the farmers are using, and what’s in that water. The more my mom described the danger, the more we wanted to go!! We were looking for adventure! But it was my dad who settled the matter… “Boys, go, I’ll take care of your mother.”
The truth is that we were more of a danger to each other than anyone or anything was to us. We’d leap from trees and high places. We’d get in rock fights. We’d shoot at each other with slingshots and BB guns. We’d set fires and blow things up. We’d grab snakes by the tale, fry up fry, and try to drink the creek water. But its in the face of danger we most learn to trust God! Glad there were no bears or lions!
Grit is Embracing Calling
Early on, David understood God’s purpose and call upon his life. As the story goes, the Lord appeared to Samuel the prophet and told him to go to the house of Jesse, because the Lord had chosen one of Jesse’s sons to be King of Israel. As Samuel enters Bethlehem, the Elders of the town freak out, and they ask Samuel if he was coming in peace. But of course, Samuel has come to offer sacrifices to the Lord, and to set apart one of Jesse’s sons to be king.
Jesse presents each of his sons one at a time to Samuel. But as they pass before him, its clear that none of Jesse’s older sons are God’s anointed. Finally Samuel asks Jesse "is this all of your sons?" Jesse hadn’t thought to include David. David was still out tending the sheep! But sure enough… Jesse presents David to Samuel, and Samuel anoints David. From that moment on we’re told in 1 Samuel 16:13, “the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon David.”
Here is my point… We let everyone get to our kids and speak words. We let culture call out all sorts of evil and vile things from this younger generation. But when do we ever let the “Samuels” speak over our youth?
When I was a teenager, my parents made it appoint of introducing me to godly people, like Ed and Flo. Ed was one of the few men in our church who brought his Bible. His wife’s health was failing, and I was always impressed how much he loved her. He patiently get her out of their car, help her into a wheelchair, and take her into the sanctuary. But Ed took an interest in me. He would walk up, open his Bible, and have me read a Bible verse. He’d ask me what I thought it meant, and then he’d explain what it meant to him. One day he said to me, “Jon, you’re going to be a preacher someday.” He didn’t say, “I think you might someday…” He said, “You are…” That was like my freshmen year, when I was an obnoxious punk! The Spirit of God showed him something long before me or anyone else.
What if everyone grew up, knowing God has a purpose and plan for their life. What if before the world got to our kids, we let God get to them first, and call out the very best instead of the very worst? One reason David wasn’t afraid of Lions and Bears… and really, their terrible football teams anyway… but one reason he wasn’t afraid of Lions and Bears was because God he knew God’s greater call on his life. He had confidence no bear or lion, nor Goliath, was ever going to mess up God’s plan.
Grit is Embracing Opportunity
The last thing I want to mention was that when opportunity finally came, Jesse was willing to release David to greater opportunities. David had become well-known as a musician and song writer. As King Saul became more disobedient toward the Lord, an evil spirit began to torment him. An attendant of King Saul, remembered David, and recommended David play his harp to sooth the King, to help him find peace. Sure enough, as David played, the evil spirit would leave Saul and he’d find rest. Saul liked David so much he made him his armor bearer, and personal musician.
In her TED talk, Angela Duckworth identifies the importance of GRIT… but she confesses that neither she, nor psychologists, don’t know much about cultivating GRIT. I believe this is our opportunity.
Think about the GRIT you developed whenever you’ve embraced obscurity, responsibility, danger, a deeper sense of calling and purpose, God-sized opportunities. If you aren’t living a life of faith, you’re not living large enough. The more David leaned into GRIT, the more real God became to him, the more faithful God proved himself to be. And the more real God became, the more David sought after God’s very own heart.
*Next week: Gritty Heart… look at David musician, navigated emotions… 5 QUESTIONS