Sticking the landing

The 2026 Winter Olympics are already in the slipstream of sports history. But you can be sure that training has begun for the next one. And equally sure that an important part of the practice of every figure skater and gymnast will be to master the sticking of the landing.

“Sticking the landing” spells the difference between a medal and no medal. You can have 2 minutes and 40 seconds of flawless execution, only to blow it all at the end. But this is true in life as well. Many a Christian pilgrimage is disappointing because, though the child of God reads her Bible, confesses her sins, and signs up for every retreat that comes down the pike, it all amounts to little because she doesn’t “stick the landing.”

By sticking the landing I mean the step of perfect completion, of holding firm one’s landing position without losing balance. God intends for us to wrestle with each testing He allows into our lives and to “land” at a conclusion for action. But I find it rare that the concept of resolution is preached, and indeed it is even under suspicion as works righteousness and an enemy of grace. Good luck with that. Allowing anything less makes us the dog ever returning to its vomit—treading water, stuck in cycles, failing to make progress in conformity to Christ.

For example: Let’s say a woman invites her father to move into her house when he is old and a widower. She is sincere when she says at the outset, “Now Dad, I want you to think of this house as your house too. The way I look at the roof over our heads is as God’s provision for both of us, so do not ever feel like you’re imposing. Mi casa es su casa.”

Then the first time they have an argument the woman blurts out, “This is MY house, and you should be grateful to live here!” Then they patch things up for a while, and daughter reaffirms to Dad that this house is God’s gift to both of them. Later they will fight again and she will yell again, “This is MY house!”

This is how you know the woman didn’t stick the landing. Wobbling back and forth is indication that the matter was not settled in her heart the way it should have been. The lizard is not dead but merely sleeping.

Shall I submit evidence from the Bible that God wants us to think through hard things, down to the nub, comparing Scripture to Scripture, and then making up our mind? How about the fellow in Corinthians whom Paul commends for the internal private work of coming to decide that he will forgo marriage for the kingdom’s sake:

“If anyone thinks he is not behaving properly toward his betrothed … let him do as he wishes: let them marry—it is no sin. But whoever is firmly established in his heart, being under no necessity but having his desire under control, and has determined this in his heart, to keep her as his betrothed, he will do well” (1 Corinthians 7:36–37).

Whatever else this teaching means, it means we’re meant to learn how to “establish” and “determine” things within our hearts, and “to have our desires under control.” The man Paul notes is fixed in purpose. He will not look back. Only God will ever know the secret agony he lived before he made that firm resolve. Think of Mary’s husband Joseph, what he must have suffered in the dark wee hours to arrive, by morning’s light, at the decision not to put his pregnant fiancée to public shame (Matthew 1:19–20).

All acts of courage are a private death before they ever are a public one. And “fighting the good fight” (1 Timothy 6:12) is lonely business, done by men “of whom the world was not worthy” (Hebrews 11:38). What you and I observe in people we mark out to be mature in Christ is but the endpoint of untold numbers of voluntary wrestlings of the soul that we saw not, that came before. “Double-minded” and “unstable” men, James says, are “like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind” (James 1:6, 8). They are men who never learn to stick the landing.

“Pick up your cross and follow me,” said Christ. What is that but to put to death desires, wants, frustrations, and annoyances? The woman with her father getting nowhere would do well to choose, while it is day, to stop forging a chain of wood and hay and stubble, and instead to try by all the grace that God affords to stick the landing and go for the gold.