Sitting on the Couch

My dear friend and former colleague Daniel Aldridge often asked our students "What are you going to do after high school to get off mom and dad's couch?" Being entrenched in the world of college and career preparedness, that question goes much deeper than just asking the question of "What do you want to be when you grow up?". Our job as parents, counselors, teachers, and other mentors/advisors is to help students identify their strengths, skills and interests then support them as they explore career fields that provide jobs in that sweet spot where interests and aptitudes intersect. Daniel's question wasn't designed to poke at students, but rather to get them to start thinking about how they will make this world a better place because they are in it! And to Daniel's point, that most likely isn't going to be achieved sitting on the couch of life. Honestly, whether you are sitting on the couch, laying down on the couch, or even laid back in the recliner of complacency you aren't moving forward. For those sitting on the couch, opportunity is passing them by. I'd like to plant this nugget before we move on. Sitting on the couch is comfortable, it feels good, but as long as we are sitting on the couch we aren't moving or progressing. 

Why wouldn't we just sit down on the comfortable couch of life and just relax? Well, the obvious response to that for me would be that progress isn't attained through complacency. Sitting down means you aren't interested in moving forward and the last time I checked progress is established through positive change and that type of change requires blood, sweat, and many times tears. I just don't see this scenario playing out while someone is sitting on the couch of complacency. Think about it this way. A weightlifter doesn't increase his strength by lifting the same weight over and over without ever increasing the weight on the bar. If the person is lifting weights for the purpose of getting stronger, then it is essential to increase the weight, even though that will create more resistance and that resistance will produce a certain degree of discomfort. We can't move forward by leaving the same weight on the bar and we can't accomplish goals without moving forward. It is really that simple. So why is it that so many folks are making their indention on the couch of life? For that answer, I believe the Apostle Paul can shed some insight on the struggle he endured and how he overcame his own complacency.

Even after Paul's conversion from being a persecutor of Christians to that of one of the leading founders of early Christianity as a religious faith, he, being flesh and bone, struggled with doing what would be best for himself or those he influenced. In Romans 7:15 NIV Paul states, "I don't really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do what I hate." Relating Paul's dilemma to our conversation today, this would be the essence of a couch sitter. I know I shouldn't be sitting around on the couch, but I do it anyway. No progress, no goal attainment, nothing beneficial or productive is going to happen while we are sitting on the couch of complacency. 

Yet, all is not doom and gloom in the service of our Lord and Savior. Over the years of coaching wrestling a major hurdle I wanted to get my wrestlers over was not allowing their body to tell their head what to do. In much the same way as the weightlifter increasing the weight to experience progress, if something we were doing in practice was hard and the student/athlete began feeling some discomfort the body was going to be shouting out to the brian, stop that hurts! At times that may be a subtle suggestion later that evening as the pain settled in for the night, or it could be loud and proud right there at the moment when a challenge suddenly appears to be insurmountable for your body to achieve. The easy thing to do would be to quit and sit right down on the couch, but that wasn't how my wreslters improved and placed themselves at the top of their sport. Instead they had to dig down deep and turn down the volume of despair and the acceptance of mediocrity. Paul knew that his struggles were real and that on his own he would struggle to overcome the hurdle in front of him. Paul recognized he needed the strength and power of God to motivate him to get up off the couch and to move forward regardless of the struggle ahead. 

There is a couch for all the different areas of your life where complacency may reign. You may be looking at a challenge you are facing and it appears the struggle and fight it will take to overcome is too much for you to bear. Struggles at work, your mind says, sit down on the couch. Problems in a relationship, "just sit down on the couch". Physical challenges, substance addictions, or financial hurdles may be telling you to just sit down on the couch because you can't overcome what life has placed in your lap. Sitting on the couch may feel like the easy thing to do, but I can promise you it isn't the right thing to do! Paul found himself in a dilemma that he could not find the answer on his own. If you continue reading the next series of verses after Romans 7:15 he tries to explain himself out of it, but nothing seems to make sense by just sitting back on the couch when you know you should be up running the course that God has set before you to run. (Hebrews 12:1-3) Paul battles back and forth with this struggle in Romans 7, yet at the end of the day, Paul realizes that his body is telling him to sit down and accept his limitations and inadequacies, but he also understands that by and through the mercy and grace of Jesus Christ, he can overcome his body with the mind of Jesus Christ! 

"So this is the principle I have discovered: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law. But I see another law at work in my body, warring against the law of my mind and holding me captive to the law of sin that dwells within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!" Romans 7:21-25.

Paul realized he could not overcome his sit down on the couch mentality without the mind altering faith that he had placed in Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. His offer is offered to me and it is available to you. Don't get stuck on your life's couch, get up, get moving, and get back in the game! Your life wasn't designed to be spent sitting on the couch to watch it waste away. You were made on purpose for a purpose and you are tasked with finding out what you need to do to fulfill His purpose. I'm pretty confident you were not designed to just around and watch life pass you by. Get up off the couch and move forward!

Coach Carter