Who won the game last night? When do they play next? You open your computer to check the scores, and along the way, the ads are inescapable. You couldn’t avoid them if you tried. Sports betting has arrived in full force.

The advertisers are not wasting their money either. In February 2024, an estimated 68 million Americans were expected to wager over 23 billion dollars on the Super Bowl. This comes as no surprise since just under 120 billion dollars was bet on sports in 2023. That’s $360 per person in the United States. Sports betting has most likely arrived in your church, and it might have even set up shop in your own home. If it hasn’t yet, the bookies are certainly knocking on the door.

Sports betting has infiltrated the sporting ecosystem. How should Christians respond?

Stewardship Problem

Some respond by suggesting that gambling in any form — including sports betting — is reckless and fails to contribute anything meaningful to the real world. The money wagered also belongs ultimately to our God, so failure to manage it well amounts to embezzlement against him. Additionally, he gives each of us one life to live, and better investments abound for the money and the time used to engage with sports betting.

Sports betting has also become something of a Trojan horse for more nefarious forms of gambling as well as gambling addiction. Sports betting functions as a door into the wide hall of Internet gambling — particularly for young people who ordinarily would not set foot into a casino. Gambling companies, driven by their bottom line, see a return on investment of 500 percent when they convert a sports better into a casino gambler.

We shouldn’t be surprised that the desire for thrill and gain can escalate occasional game-specific sports betting into 24-hour-a-day forms of online gambling. After all, Paul warns Timothy, “Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils” (1 Timothy 6:9–10).

‘Responsible’ Sports Betting?

The stewardship argument certainly carries weight, and sober-minded Christians should have a category for the slippery slope, especially in activities so closely related to greed.

But more and more, a common rationalization has come to the forefront: What about “responsible” sports betting? Sports betting is now legal in many places, so the social stigma has lessened. Do we not spend money on other hobbies and activities? So what could be wrong with betting on a limited budget, especially while remaining focused on enjoying the sports experience with friends? Is there no room for carefully enhancing and intensifying the sports-watching experience?

Beyond the stewardship problem and the risk of gambling addiction, however, several other aspects of sports betting point to a serious, sobering reality: Sports betting wagers more than just our resources. Due to how it shapes our view of risk, how it corrupts the nature of sports, and how it fails to love our neighbor, sports betting is unwise and even sinful.

1. Sports betting distorts our view of risk.

Sports betting distorts our view of risk and dulls our capacity for true and lasting joy. While betting companies pitch sports betting as a risk to enhance enjoyment, the practice ultimately encourages risk for immediate financial reward.

“Sports betting fails to love anyone but self — and it even fails at that.”

The book of Proverbs warns against betting slogans like, “The more you play, the more you’ll earn.” Proverbs 13:11 counsels, “Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little makes it grow.” Or consider Proverbs 28:20: “A faithful man will abound with blessings, but whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished.” Sports betting conditions our hearts to love risk for the sake of immediate financial gain, and chasing such wealth leads to destruction.

We should not conclude, however, that we should never take risks. The farmer who “observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap,” declares the Preacher in Ecclesiastes 11:4. Rather than seeing dismal prospects and refusing to take God-honoring, entrepreneurial risk, the Preacher calls for humility and faithful labor before the “God who makes everything” (Ecclesiastes 11:5–6).

Two factors distinguish the faithful entrepreneur from the sports bettor. First, whereas the sports bettor aims to gather quick wealth, the faithful entrepreneur aims to create wealth. Christian business seeks to love neighbor by providing a good or service at a fair price. Sports betting fails to love anyone but self — and it even fails at that.

Second, the faithful entrepreneur embraces risk but also seeks to mitigate risk in the areas he can control. By doing so, he embraces risk with wisdom and faith, whereas sports betting increases risks for the sake of higher payouts. In other words, sports betting teaches us to embrace risk in the wrong ways.

Additionally, Christians take gospel risks for the sake of eternal joy. Jesus calls upon us to give up our life in order to gain it (Luke 9:24). Paul calls death in Christ gain for the one dying (Philippians 1:21). Acts 15:26 describes Paul and Barnabas as “men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Whereas sports betting conditions people to take risks for immediate hits of dopamine or rapid financial reward, Christians take risks with Christ and immortal souls in mind. So, we should avoid participating in activities that train us to think of risk deficiently.

2. Sports betting corrupts sport.

Not only does sports betting distort our view of risk, but it also corrupts God’s holy purposes for sport. The same God who created the sea monster to play in the depths of the ocean (Psalm 104:26) created humans to enjoy the world he has given to us (Ecclesiastes 3:12–13). Holy play today, as a momentary rest from the burdens of daily life, helps us look forward with hope to the new creation awaiting us tomorrow.

Though not utilitarian in essence, sports can also benefit humanity. In particular, competition can cultivate self-control and skill — though we should be wary of the envy that lurks at the door (Ecclesiastes 4:4). At its best, sports can bring out the best in competitors.

Sports betting, however, corrupts both imaginative play and athletic competition. By reducing the game to wins and losses — or worse, point spreads or in-game betting — the result of the game supersedes the game itself. Certainly, the bettor has more on the line related to the outcome, but he can no longer enjoy the game for the simple beauty of the play or the nuances of the competition.

Not only this, but more and more players in professional sports have been swept up by the sports-gambling flood. Fans of these sports have reason to be concerned when players have been found to bet on their own sports, bet on their own team, and bet on their own personal performance — sometimes even betting that they will not perform well and then checking out of the game with an “injury.”

Sports betting corrupts the nature of sports and the purpose of sports, and it also incentivizes players to participate in the corruption, making it unwise for Christians to participate in such a broken and detrimental system.

3. Sports betting lacks love for neighbor.

Let’s say you do very well in sports betting. You are one of the few who outsmart the system and make a decent amount of money doing so. The question then becomes “Who loses?” In reality, sports betting is not a zero-sum game; it is a negative-sum game. The house, by definition, must win. To do so, sportsbooks subtly stack the odds so that if bettors wager an even amount of money on both teams, the sportsbook will still make money.

Scripture establishes the command to “love your neighbor as yourself,” which Jesus affirms as one of the two — along with love for God — upon which all the Law and the Prophets depend (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:37–40). Paul calls upon Christians in Philippians 2:4, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

The bookies cannot lose money. Therefore, in order for you to win, your neighbor must lose. And as you take your neighbor’s money — possibly contributing to a destructive gambling addiction — you make a profit for the predatory sportsbook as well. Sports betting lacks love for neighbor.

This lack of love requires repentance, even if done unintentionally or ignorantly (Numbers 15:27–31).

Guard Your Heart

Proverbs issues a warning to all who would walk the path of wisdom:

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. . . . Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or the left; turn your foot away from evil. (Proverbs 4:23)

Sports betting calls us down a crooked path, one that will reshape our hearts away from life. It promises pleasures, but they are, at best, fleeting and fraught with unholy risk. That path swerves from the deep and enduring joys that come by following God’s designs in God’s ways.

So, yes, sports betting has arrived in full force. And how should we respond? It may feel like we cannot avoid sports betting — or at least the ads. But because sports betting distorts our view of risk, corrupts sports, and lacks love for neighbor, participating is unwise and even sinful. Do not risk your heart, and your neighbor, for quick financial gain.

Jesus didn’t grow up studying the Gospel of John, 2 Corinthians, or Hebrews. Instead, books like Leviticus, Psalms, and Isaiah shaped our Savior’s mission and understanding of God and his ways. What we call the Old Testament was Jesus’s only Bible. He summarized it as “the Law and the Prophets,” which he saw as lastingly relevant for his followers: “I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). He also stressed that Moses’s instructions continue to matter today: “Whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:19).

Later, when Paul took his three missionary journeys, Matthew’s Gospel did not yet exist, and there was no book of Revelation. Yet Christians still had authoritative sacred writings, for Paul could declare, “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4; see also 1 Corinthians 10:11). The same apostle could stress (with the Old Testament principally in view) that “all Scripture is . . . profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” and he could urge his pastoral apprentice, “Preach the word!” (2 Timothy 3:16; 4:2).

Awed and Asking New Questions

These ideas were new for me in the autumn of 1995, when my wife and I moved to New England and I began my MDiv at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Until that time, I knew the Old Testament declared the global problem of sin for which Christ was the saving solution. I also knew that the initial part of my Bible was filled with stories like the exodus (Exodus 14–15), David’s defeat of Goliath (1 Samuel 17), and Daniel’s deliverance from the lions’ den (Daniel 6) — all of which displayed God’s kindness and greatness.

Yet it was during that initial fall semester of seminary, sitting in Theology of the Pentateuch, that my heart first began to burn, awed by God’s glory and amazed at Scripture’s unity and story climaxing in Christ. Other classes — on biblical theology, Hebrew and Greek language, Old and New Testament exegesis, and the New Testament’s use of the Old — overwhelmed me with the perfections of divine beauty and with the purposes of God from Genesis to Revelation.

Yet I still had so many questions, especially related to how the biblical covenants progress and interrelate. What was the church to do with Old Testament laws and promises — especially those given to a different people under a different covenant? How does old-covenant Israel relate to the new-covenant church? Should Scripture’s teaching and progression lead me to become a Baptist or a Presbyterian? In salvation, how should we understand the doctrine of imputation, and how do justification and sanctification relate?

Such queries swirled in my head as I came to the end of my graduate studies. But what was still missing at this time was sustained, dependent reflection on the significance of Jesus Christ, whose person and work alone supply answers to these important questions. Another five years would pass before I would have a conversation that would reorient my life onto a new path.

Equipped to Magnify God’s Majesty

In 2000 I began my PhD at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, majoring in Old Testament Literature and minoring in both Old Testament Language and New Testament Theology, the latter because I always wanted to have a grasp of “the whole counsel of God” for the church (Acts 20:27). I went deep and far, growing much and ever maintaining my conviction that the Bible in its entirety is God’s written word.

As a minister, I wanted to study God’s word carefully, practice it rightly, and teach it faithfully — in that order (Ezra 7:10). I resolved that in my instruction, counseling, and writing I would join Paul in declaring, “We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God” (2 Corinthians 4:2). Careful exegesis of Galatians 3 and whole-Bible theology made me a convictional Baptist, and I fell more in love with the wondrous glory of our holy, holy, holy God.

Along with my doctoral courses and teaching ministry as an associate pastor, John Piper’s Desiring God, Future Grace, Pleasures of God, and Brothers, We Are Not Professionals developed my doctrinal sensitivities and expanded my capacity for treasuring God in his matchless worth. They also shaped within me a rock-solid theology of suffering that prepared me for future ministry and for leading my family through life’s storms. Yet there was something — or someone — still missing from the center of my solar system. I still needed to see that “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). We fully and properly encounter God’s glory by looking at Jesus.

‘Very Little About Jesus’

In the summer of 2005, my family of five moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, so I could begin my first full-time teaching post as an Old Testament professor. Upon my request (and with some help from Tom Schreiner), John Piper agreed to have lunch with me. I shared with him and Justin Taylor, his assistant at the time, how much a passion for God’s glory had captured me and how eager I was to proclaim the beauties and bigness of God from the initial three-fourths of the Bible.

After listening for a while, Pastor John asked Justin if he had any reflections. Justin offered a single statement that shook me to the core and that God used to reorient my affections and set me on a path of discovery and awe that I am still journeying today. He said, “I hear a lot about God’s glory and very little about Jesus.”

Through Christ and for Christ

In the weeks and months that followed, I considered whether, as a Christian, my interpretive approach and ministry practice aligned with the truth that there were “mysteries” kept secret in the Old Testament that only the lens of Christ’s coming could disclose (Romans 16:25–26), thus making the apostolic witness necessary for properly grasping all that God wants us to gain from the Old Testament (Acts 2:42; Ephesians 2:20).

“Getting the Old Testament right demands that we keep Christ at the center.”

Stated differently, did I interpret and preach old-covenant materials in a way that embraced the twin realities that only spiritual people can read a spiritual book (1 Corinthians 2:13–14) and that only through Christ does God lift the veil, enabling those once spiritually blind to fully understand and apply the Old Testament’s significance (2 Corinthians 3:14–15)? Was I seeking a knowledge of God’s glory “in the face of Jesus” (2 Corinthians 4:6)?

Furthermore, did I rightly see that God designed the whole Old Testament to move us to magnify the Messiah, savoring Jesus as the climax of Old Testament history (Mark 1:15; Galatians 4:4), the focus of Old Testament prophecies (Matthew 11:13; Luke 16:16; Acts 3:18, 24), the Yes of every promise (2 Corinthians 1:20), and the end of old-covenant law (Romans 10:4; Galatians 3:24–26)? Indeed, God created all things (including the Old Testament) in the Son, through the Son, and for the Son (Colossians 1:16). The very Spirit that guided the Old Testament prophets ever seeks the Son’s glory (John 16:13–14; 1 Corinthians 12:3; 2 Corinthians 3:18).

Jesus stands as both the answer key and the hermeneutical algorithm for rightly interpreting the Old Testament (2 Corinthians 3:14). We must read the Old Testament through Christ and for Christ. It was at this time that I began to see the Old Testament for the Christian Scripture it is.

Behold the King in His Beauty

Over the next many years, my family and I were active members at Bethlehem Baptist Church, feasting week by week on John Piper’s preaching ministry and enjoying the fellowship of saints who cherished Christ and God’s work in the world. In 2009 I became one of the founding professors of Bethlehem College and Seminary, and I continued to grow in my understanding of how the Testaments relate and how the Old Testament is, as my friend Jim Hamilton likes to say, “a messianic document written from a messianic perspective to instill messianic hope.”

After the early Christians met the resurrected Christ, they gained understanding into the true meaning of the Old Testament, seeing in it a message of the Messiah’s suffering and triumph and the universal mission he would spark (Luke 24:45–47; Acts 26:22–23). This is not a message forced upon the Old Testament from the outside. No! Through the Old Testament prophets, God promised the gospel of Jesus we now celebrate (Romans 1:1–3). Yet even in the promise, God maintained the “mystery . . . kept secret for long ages” — the mystery that is now being made known to all nations “through the prophetic writings” themselves (Romans 16:25–26)!

Whether a pastor or Bible-study leader, a stay-at-home mom or a businessman, if you are a Christian, the Old Testament is for you. Read Genesis considering how Abraham saw and rejoiced in Jesus’s day (John 8:56), even if from afar (Matthew 13:17; Hebrews 11:13). When reading of Israel’s wilderness journey or through Moses’s Deuteronomic sermons, be ever mindful that Moses wrote of Christ (John 1:45; 5:46–47). Look for how books like Judges, Esther, and Ecclesiastes bear witness about Jesus (John 5:39), and study Jeremiah, Habakkuk, and Malachi convinced with Peter that “all the prophets” spoke of Christ’s suffering, the church’s rise, and the forgiveness that all believers can enjoy through Jesus (Acts 3:18, 24; 10:43). As you do, you will increasingly “behold the king in his beauty” (Isaiah 33:17), and your life will never be the same (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Every Page Christian

As many Old Testament texts make clear (for example, Deuteronomy 30:6, 8; Isaiah 29:18; 30:8; Jeremiah 30:2–3, 24; Daniel 12:9–10), God revealed to the prophets that “they were serving not themselves but you” as they carefully searched their Scriptures to discern more about the person of Christ, the time of his coming, and the glories that would follow (1 Peter 1:10–12).

Getting the Old Testament right demands that we keep Christ at the center (1 Corinthians 2:2; Colossians 1:28). We must account for how redemptive history progresses through the various covenants climaxing in Christ. A wrong view of Jesus’s person and work will lead to a wrong view of salvation, missions, Christian ethics, the appropriation of biblical promises, the roles of men and women, the church’s governance and makeup, the church’s relationship to Israel and the state, and so much more. But when Jesus is elevated as both the necessary light and lens, we are equipped with God’s help to answer such questions, ever delighting in all Christian Scripture — both the Old and New Testaments.

Earnestness in our day is becoming all the more admirable for being rare. The age of scrolling, skimming, and lol’ing, by and large, has made us a lighter, more superficial, more fragile people. Many of us have slowly developed an allergy to seriousness. Our hearts faint too easily.

The bright lives of a few, though, pierce through this spiritual fog, and sparkle with a reality that has grown dim for many. Their words, their priorities, their responses repeatedly reveal that Christ has captured their fuller devotion. They delight to sacrifice and serve when others would groan and make excuses. They seem stronger in the face of adversity, kinder in the midst of conflict, more joyful than others, even in suffering. They have a focus that eludes the stressed and distracted. We’re drawn to them (and perhaps sometimes intimidated by them), because their lives remind us of what really matters, of the world that exists below the surface of our senses, of the spiritual war for our souls. Time with them stimulates us to pray more, love more, and grow more.

These saints have many qualities in common, but one is that, in the words of 2 Corinthians 8:7, they excel in earnestness.

Slothful in Zeal

Christian earnestness is a settled and joy-filled intensity toward God. As Hebrews 6:11–12 says,

We desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

Earnestness is the opposite of spiritual dullness, laziness, apathy, complacency. Like all believers, the earnest experience seasons of doubt and struggle and discouragement, but even then (maybe especially then), the flame of their faith burns warmer and brighter than expected.

“The daily fight for faith is often fought in the trenches of our own dullness.”

Where else is this spiritual fire mentioned? The apostle Paul exhorts us, “Do not be slothful in zeal” — same word — “be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord” (Romans 12:11). That verse alone calls for some serious reflection and prayer. How often have we felt slothful in zeal? How often have we felt spiritually aflame? And how comfortable have many of us grown with our persistent sluggishness? Do we still pray for God to rekindle the fire we once had?

The daily fight for faith is often fought in the trenches of our own dullness. Like the mercy that comes every morning, we each need a fresh awakening for the day at hand.

Sinners Set Aflame

This word for earnestness (Greek spoudei) appears most often (four times) in 2 Corinthians 7–8. In these two chapters, the apostle outlines the deadly difference between godly grief over sin and ungodly grief. “Godly grief,” he says, “produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death” (2 Corinthians 7:10).

The Corinthians had been neglecting to discipline those who had sought to discredit and ruin Paul, so when he wrote his previous (and painful) letter (see 2 Corinthians 2:2), he meant for his words to grieve them. But he wanted them to experience a godly grief, a repentant grief, a hopeful grief, a grief that leads to salvation — not the shallow, self-centered sorrow so many, even atheists, often feel over the consequences of sin. What did the apostle want to happen in them as they were confronted with their sin?

Although I wrote to you, it was not for the sake of the one who did the wrong, nor for the sake of the one who suffered the wrong, but in order that your earnestness for us might be revealed to you in the sight of God. (2 Corinthians 7:12)

As you prepare to stand before God, Paul says, I want you to see your own earnestness in his eyes. I want you to savor the spiritual fire my letter has sparked in you.

And the Corinthians did grieve well. Paul affirms them, “See what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal” (2 Corinthians 7:11). As they were confronted with their sin, they not only acknowledged it, and repented of it, but they were also filled with a fresh, sobered, active sense of reality. Serious conviction before God birthed a more serious devotion to God and a more serious love for others.

Notice that this awakening, this earnestness, was seeded by a hard word from Paul. Rebuke, as unpleasant as it may feel in the moment, is often an invitation from God into greater spiritual sanity and vitality. And yet, too often, we instead wallow in self-pity, miss the invitation, and forfeit the fire we might have experienced.

Growing in Earnestness

That the Corinthians lacked earnestness and then grew to excel in it means that, however spiritually sluggish we feel, we too can grow in earnestness. What might it look like to pursue earnestness? The word appears again in 2 Peter 1:3–8 — “make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge,” and so on. One might say, “With all earnestness, supplement your faith with virtue . . .” In these verses, Peter gives us windows into what sets the earnest apart.

The earnest consistently live and build on a firmer foundation, with higher and more Godward priorities, while drawing on a wealth of resources so few learn to access.

Foundations of Earnestness

First, the earnest are unusually secure and settled, because they live and build on a firmer foundation. Peter writes, “[God has] called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason, make every effort . . .” (2 Peter 1:3–4). Notice the convictions that fuel this earnestness:

God himself has called us to his glory and excellence.
God has granted us all of his precious and very great promises.
God has made us partakers of the divine nature — by his Spirit, he now lives in us and conforms us to himself.
God has delivered us from the corruption of this world.

Active awakeness to these realities produces gravity and freedom in a soul. They form a foundation underneath a person that keeps him or her from being tossed to and fro by circumstances. They steady and anchor our faith so that we can see more clearly and act more decisively in love.

“Christian earnestness is a settled and joy-filled intensity toward God.”

Part of pursuing earnestness is assessing the ground beneath our feet. Are we really building our lives and ministries on the rocks God has laid before us in Christ? Are we finding our footing, morning by morning, upon the most important realities in the world, or have we become preoccupied with everything else?

Directions of Earnestness

In addition to security and stability, though, souls need direction. If the earnest make every effort, where does all that effort go? Many work hard, with unfettered passion, until they’re burnt out, but in all the wrong directions. The joy-filled intensity of godly earnestness, however, aligns its effort with the priorities of heaven.

Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:5–8)

Part of what sets the earnest apart is found in how they spend themselves. They devote themselves to spiritual concerns and opportunities over worldly ones — and they delight to do so.

The earnest have not fallen in love with this present world (2 Timothy 4:10), and so they refuse to pour their best energies into the passing parts of this life that feel so pressing. They seek truth like silver. They want, with God’s help, to master their cravings and impulses. They treasure godliness above anything they might achieve. They’re not content to love only a little, but want their love to “abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment” (Philippians 1:9).

Wells of Earnestness

As the earnest make every effort toward faith, toward steadfastness, toward holiness, toward love, they do not rely on their own strength. They carry more than most longer than most precisely because they endure in the strength and grace of another. “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises” (2 Peter 1:3).

When it comes to life and godliness, we are helpless on our own. Jesus says, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). If we really believed those seven words, they would solve an enormous amount of dysfunction in our hearts and relationships. But God did not leave us to ourselves. “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.” Through faith, God takes our nothing — our utter inability to think, feel, and act in ways that glorify him — and he gives us all things in Christ.

The earnest make their homes beside these wells. They know that heaven’s storehouses of strength, wisdom, courage, and love are only a prayer away. They draw constantly from the precious, great, and specific promises of God. His strength makes them look strong, but only because they know themselves weak without him.

Make Every Effort

Among those you know, who seems to live closest to Jesus? Whose life consistently pierces through the worldliness around you and shines with a supernatural quality? Whose words and actions are marked by both urgency and patience, ambition and humility, hunger and contentment? Whose conversations stimulate you to pray and love and grow more?

Make every effort to study, befriend, and imitate such saints. Their lives are a priceless testimony and reminder, and their camaraderie invaluable, in our shallow and distracted age. Disrupt any comfort you feel with your own sluggishness. Ask God for the grace to excel in earnestness.