Guest post by Courtney Schnee
Mental preparation plays a big role in athletic pre-game preparedness. I remember sitting in the locker room in college visualizing soccer plays in my mind. I would picture myself guarding my opponents’ best player and shutting her down. The time we spent as a team going over the opponent’s plays and certain player’s abilities were also part of the preparation for a game. All of this visualization and thinking in our minds of what the game would be like consumed me until the game came. It gave me confidence that I would play well, but also made the anticipation very high.
I was ready to be there, under the lights in the wet grass in the middle of the game, fighting for a victory. I was ready to play, and win.
This week in a Bible study, the leader encouraged us to “think about heaven”. She shared about the life of Charles Spurgeon who she said “thought about heaven” for thirty minutes a day. He would ride off into the woods and spend time just thinking about the heaven. Wow! That sounds wonderful. To visualize our home for eternity everyday. To long for and picture in our minds the place where we will see our creator face to face and just be with him. How wonderful it would be to really think about our future life in eternity and let it consume us. I am almost positive that if I were to visualize Heaven everyday for an extended time period my life would look very different. I would hope that I would be more like Jesus, Paul, or even Spurgeon. All of these men knew that this world was not their home and lived in light of that fact.
I hope and pray that my mental preparedness and visualization in this life will take me beyond winning a game, an important event coming up, an exciting vacation or dreams of a more successful life. I pray for you and for myself that we will think about our eternal home and long for it so much that our lives now are changed.
[Image courtesy of gi]
 
