Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone: I think that me being able to show even in losses that I’m satisfied in the Lord and His plan for me is the best thing I could do, because it shows people that I’m not relying on winning to be okay. It shows that even someone who has world records and gold medals still needs the Lord.

Glory on the Field and Grace in Our Hearts with Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Eugene Cho – Episode #397

Narrator: Welcome to the Jesus Calling Podcast. People of faith have many opportunities to demonstrate how that faith leads and guides them. As a star athlete recognizes where their gifts and talents come from on a platform for all to see, we can also be faithful in our normal daily interactions with others, demonstrating grace—especially when we disagree—and showing kindness, understanding, and humility, all which reflect the love of Christ in our lives.

Our first guest is Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, an American hurdler and sprinter who competes in the 400 meter hurdles. She is the 2020 Tokyo Olympic champion with the Games record, and 2022 World champion with a world record time of 50.68 seconds. It takes work to be the kind of athlete Sydney has become, but she always acknowledges the One who gave her the talent and the strength to persevere in her sport. 

Sydney: So both of my parents ran track. My dad mainly focused on the 400 and my mom ran the 800. And they put my older sister in track, my older brother in track, kind of just when they were young, you know, five, six years old to keep them active. 

I think my parents, I credit them so much for how they handled my young years. They didn’t want to overwhelm me with rigorous training at a young age. They really wanted me to grow and develop number one, my body, and number two my love for the sport naturally. Not because they wanted to force me into anything, not because I had some coach that wanted me to go win Nationals. It was very much so, “If you love this, if you want to do this, great.” 

I ran my first race and I was so terrified to do it, but once I actually started and the gun went off, I just felt so free. And there was so much fun between the start and finish line that by the time I finished, I was number one, glad it was over with, but I hadn’t even realized that I’d won the race. I think my dad realized very quickly like, Oh, wow, no training, six years old, won by a large margin. She had the gift. And yeah, I didn’t like the before, but I definitely loved the race itself. 

The main thing for them was us being active and us being social. My dad would take us to the track, but he wasn’t putting us through workouts. He was just teaching me proper running mechanics and how to stretch and how to do drills, and that was it. And then I would go to the meets and I would just use the gifts God gave me and whatever happened happened, you know?

It’s All in the Details

I think people always want to know what makes certain people the way that they are. And I think some of the answers, they sound so basic that people are like, “All right.” But it’s true, nutrition, recovery, sleep, treatment, consistency, like all of those things. When you get to the professional level, every millisecond truly counts. And so I could say, you know, [it’s a] God-given gift for sure, but that gift has to be nurtured the right way. And so that’s what I think is the difference between first and second place is how well are you taking care of all the details? 

I think it kind of reached its peak after the Doha World Championships in 2019, falling short yet again to another world record where I felt like if a few things had been changed physically, it might have been a closer race. As hard of a time as that was, I’m grateful for it because I don’t think I would have realized my need for God without it. And it truly was surrendering my life to the Lord that kind of shifted my perspective of taking my eyes off of myself and realizing that I don’t have it within me to heal these things, to sustain these things, that it’s going to come from something outside of myself. And I think God really helped to rework my mind and my heart to truly put Him on the throne of my life. And because of that, I was able to reprioritize how I viewed track and field and how I prepared for races, how I viewed wins versus losses. 

I think every athlete trains to reach a certain goal or point or whatever it is that they’ve set their minds on, whether it be winning a medal at the Junior Olympics or winning the college national championship or a gold medal at the Olympics, the world record. I think that’s always your dream and your aspiration for so long that when it comes to fruition, it truly is just like a jaw-dropping moment. 

I remember the Olympic trials in 2021, crossing the line and seeing the time and just being in disbelief because we had just broken the world record. And it took like a week for it to set in. I remember waking up the next morning and going to eat pancakes with my mom and I was like, “Did last night really happen or was it a dream?” Because it’s like, now what? And I think—super grateful for that opportunity and that moment, but I think it kind of just reminded me that we’re always striving for more. There’s always more that everybody wants. And even when we reach a milestone or whatever it is, it’s like, “Okay, now what? What’s next? Where do we go from here?” And I think that’s just that’s the heart of sport, striving to be greater. 

An Opportunity to Glorify God

I think when I was young, even all the way up through high school, there was that joy there. But I think once you get to the college level, the professional level, it becomes sponsors looking at you, possibly wanting to sign you, how you’re paying your bills once you are a professional, signing bonuses and appearance fees and prize money. It becomes a job and no longer just the love of the sport. And so I think there’s definitely more opportunity as you get older to lose a little bit of that love for it. I had a few years where I didn’t love it as much and it became kind of a burden for sure, but I can say now that I truly do love it, and I still feel that joy and freedom when I step on the track. 

And I think now I can show up to the track every day and understand that this is a gift He’s given me that win, lose, or draw, it’s an opportunity to glorify Him, and my value is already secure in Christ. So there’s no fear of not being enough and that everything that I need is found in Him.

“I can show up to the track every day and understand that this is a gift He’s given me that win, lose, or draw, it’s an opportunity to glorify Him, and my value is already secure in Christ.” – Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone 

That’s a daily choice to die to yourself and to fix your eyes on Christ, you know? And there’s days where I think I try to take the reins of my life back and it ends up never turning out right, but when I truly surrender to God, that’s when things fall into place. And so it’s to this day a daily decision for sure. 

I think people want to be loved. That’s what every human truly, deep down desires is there’s a longing for the love that only the Lord can provide. And I think being able to share that with people, it is a hope that surpasses understanding. 

I’ve actually been so encouraged by how many believers there are in the track and field world and how many conversations I’ve had over the past couple of years with men and women who are also bold in their faith. And maybe I just wasn’t aware of it because I wasn’t looking for it, but just some of the conversations, being able to talk about our walks in faith is just so encouraging, to know that even in our sport, there’s a community of believers. 

I mean, prayer for me is an essential part of everyday, just being able to commune with God and just expose what’s in my heart to Him and share my thoughts, my feelings, and just have that intimate time to sit in His presence. That secret place that me and Him go to and I can just receive, and lay everything at His feet, which is what I’m called to do. 

This is from Jesus Listens, August 28th: 

Faithful God, 

My times are in Your hands, so my best response to the circumstances I face is trusting in You. You’re training me to feel secure in the midst of change and uncertainty. I’ve found it can actually be a relief to realize I’m not in control of my life. When I accept this human condition while resting in Your sovereignty, I become increasingly free. 

So I invite You to set the pace—blessing me with Peace that transcends all understanding. 

In Your trustworthy Name, Jesus,

Amen 

Narrator: To learn more about Sydney, check out her new book, Far Beyond Gold: Running From Fear to Faith. 

Stay tuned to Eugene Cho’s story after a brief message.

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Our next guest is a pastor, an author, and the president of Bread for the World, a Christian advocacy organization that is committed to ending hunger. Many years ago, while pastoring a church, Eugene Cho noticed a tension that was sweeping through his congregation—and it involved groups of people who disagreed strongly over faith and politics. Over time, he began to look at these situations, drawing parallels from the life of Jesus and how He handled those who disagreed with Him and His work. This inspired him to write a book about how we can better engage with those who disagree with us—by remembering we are called to love one another, no matter what our differences are.

Eugene Cho: As a local church pastor, I began to realize that there was a brewing tension—polarization around people even—within the church, not just in our larger culture, about the issue of faith and politics and just politics in general. And because I saw that happening or unfolding before my eyes, I felt like as a pastor, I wanted to help shepherd and guide my congregation around some of the tensions.

I was convicted that if the church, however imperfectly—if we’re not guiding people around the topics of faith and blank, whatever that blank might be, people are being shaped and formed or informed or they’re being discipled by others, whether we in the church want to acknowledge it or not. 

Embracing the Beauty of Contrasting Voices

I think it’s really important that we acknowledge that whether it’s intentional or not on our part, that there is a gravitational force at work in our society and world that tends to congregate people that are like-minded, like socio-economic, and as a result, what ends up happening is that we don’t always have actual relationships with people that we might disagree with. And so as a result, our thoughts are more shaped not by real experiences and real relationships around coffee tables and dining tables and in living rooms and on walks and around recreation time, but it’s more shaped and informed around water coolers that are based upon conversations or monologues given by influencers or pundits that we see on TV or the internet. 

I want to make sure that I’m keeping company with people that are not just people that will agree with everything that I will say, that are willing to challenge me, but also making sure that I’m rooted and guided in the gospel through Jesus Christ. 

“I want to make sure that I’m keeping company with people that are not just people that will agree with everything that I will say, that are willing to challenge me, but also making sure that I’m rooted and guided in the gospel through Jesus Christ.” – Eugene Cho 

I just think it’s really important that we be wise, cautious, careful not to dehumanize those that we disagree with, because in our self-righteousness, we can become the very things that we criticize in others and not even know it. And then the next thing you know, we’re surrounding ourselves with other people just like that, and we think we’re playing beautiful music, when in fact we don’t know because we’re playing the same music together. It could be cacophonous rather than some sounds that God is calling us and instructing us to make. 

“I just think it’s really important that we be wise, cautious, careful not to dehumanize those that we disagree with, because in our self-righteousness, we can become the very things that we criticize in others and not even know it.” – Eugene Cho 

I think this call for real relationships is, again, very important. It’s saddening and actually really challenging that we’re trying to have really difficult conversations about really important issues in our world and we actually don’t know people who have differing views on those very things. 

I think sometimes we can get so obsessed with the big picture that again, we miss out on what’s happening literally across the street. If God says, “Go into the world and love people,” clearly no one is going to dispute the importance of us loving when it’s appropriate, and sending missionaries or ourselves going on far away trips to other countries halfway around the world. As someone who has personally been deeply impacted—my great grandfather was one of the first people in his small, little village outside of a city called Pyongyang, which is the capital city now of North Korea. But he was one of the first people that was so deeply captivated and moved by the gospel message by these white Protestant missionaries from the United States who had sailed across the ocean for weeks to come and share the gospel of Jesus. I am so grateful for these men and women who were so convicted to sail across the world, and I’m so grateful that the gospel message, by the power of the Holy Spirit, gripped my great grandfather and my great grandmother. So I’m always going to be someone that believes and supports that we go about spreading the gospel message across the world with integrity. 

My point is, we should never replace crossing the street with our neighbors, because both matter. And I sometimes fear that many of us are having hypothetical conversations in the nebulous world with somebody across this nation or world, and yet we’re not crossing the streets and engaging in our local areas. 

One of the most human things that we can do—and this sounds really strange—is the art of neighboring. It’s that we listen to people and we have to acknowledge where their fears come from rather than dismissing it, scolding them, berating them, which is what I feel often happens. And I think the art of listening to say, “You know what? I would love to spend some time with you. Let’s go on a walk. Let’s have coffee together. I want to hear more about why you’re feeling the way that you’re feeling.” And in that, to also acknowledge that I’m also feeling some of that as well, but to consistently come back to the gospels to say, “Well, while there may be an element of small-t truth, just because we read certain things, it does not mean that it’s universally true for all circumstances and all situations.” 

How Can We Be Guided in Faith Over Fear?

Fear is a dominating currency in our culture. It’s not always, but often, what undergirds so much of what happens in our world. Because I think people—it’s interesting, but outrageousness or anger or whatever it might be, fear, it’s incentivized in our world. It feels this way. It’s monetized in our world, it’s what sells. And so we have to understand that the ultimate call for us as followers of Jesus is not to be successful. It’s not to be outrageous. It’s not to be the loudest. It’s not to be the one that’s most heard, but the one that’s rooted in Christ, who seeks to be faithful, who walks with integrity, who seeks to love like Jesus loved, including making sure that we’re mindful of the lessons of the Good Samaritan [Luke 10:25-37], that we’re mindful of the lessons of Jesus having conversations with people He had no business having conversations with, and yet He chose to do this. To remember Jesus, who washes the feet of His own disciples, including the one that He knew was going to betray Him. 

“We have to understand that the ultimate call for us as followers of Jesus is not to be successful. It’s not to be outrageous. It’s not to be the loudest. It’s not to be the one that’s most heard, but the one that’s rooted in Christ, who seeks to be faithful, who walks with integrity, who seeks to love like Jesus loved, including making sure that we’re mindful of the lessons of the Good Samaritan.” – Eugene Cho

I don’t believe that when Jesus said, “I have come to give you life and life flourishing, [John 10:10]” that living life that’s based upon fear was what He meant at all. In fact, I think it’s the antithesis of that. 

How do we remove it? I would even acknowledge that we can’t altogether remove it, but we can be wise and discerning. We can be individuals or people that acknowledge it and find antidotes particularly compelled by our faith not to have that be the dominating voice, the driving voice, the ultimate narrative that helps shape our minds or our hearts and ultimately the way that we want to live. 

How do I then choose to live if I am someone that—to quote the theological phrase that’s been utilized by many, that we are resurrection people living in a broken Friday or Good Friday world. What does that mean? I think going back to scriptures about the fruits of the spirit, people that are reliant and living by God’s goodness and mercy and grace… that we understand and seek His love and peace in our hearts, and how we engage in even complex, messy, difficult situations. To live with a more biblical, Jesus-grounded worldview, I think certainly helps to speak to that fear-based narrative that’s so dominant in our world.

Embodying Mercy, Justice and Kindness

I think it’s so important that we understand that everything that we do as followers of Christ must be rooted in this commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. That’s our anchor and our foundation. And then certainly it just doesn’t end there. It’s a vertical relationship where we’re meant to embody that in our interpersonal relationships here on Earth as well. 

“I think it’s so important that we understand that everything that we do as followers of Christ must be rooted in this commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. That’s our anchor and our foundation.” – Eugene Cho

I find it just so both convicting and challenging that the numerous times in which Jesus is teaching about what it means to love our neighbor, He chooses stories and candidates and characters that would never have been listed as good examples of neighbors in His context. And so certainly, of course, we’re to love our family and friends and those that we know, but to summarize it, to love your neighbor means that we’re also meant to love those that don’t always look like us, think like us, feel like us, worship like us. 

And it seems to be that what’s escalated in the last decade or so is that whether it’s pronounced or unpronounced, whether it’s seen or unseen, that there is a massive tribalism. Who’s with you? Who’s against you? Who’s your foe? Who’s your enemy? Who’s your ally? Who’s by your side? And we’re beginning to have that be the narrative that shapes our theology and our practicality, rather than our faith and our theology, our love for Jesus being that which shapes the way that we see the world and love our neighbors. 

The Call to Love God and Our Neighbors

How do we, as followers of Christ in an imperfect world, try to embody mercy and justice and kindness? How do we walk with integrity? How do we be people that are informed by what’s going on and yet not obsessed by what’s going on? 

I think technology in particular—how much social media has changed over the years—it has altered the very way in which we live our lives, but we haven’t really taken the time to kind of unpack what it means to be human, what it means to be a good neighbor, what it means to be a good follower of Jesus during these times. 

We’re called to love God and to love our neighbors not just in person, but also offline as well. Scripture often speaks about walking into the light. The light will shine forth, the truth shall set us free. And while I can agree that sometimes, people feel more emboldened or empowered to speak up, I want to make sure that we’re not masking that with anonymity that gives us agency… not towards boldness in terms of the fruits of the spirit. But agency to be unkind, to be ruthless, to dehumanize others, to not say things that we would say in front of others because we dare not do that, because we know that it wouldn’t be acceptable. 

I would maybe encourage us, as I feel convicted even right now, to really spend some time in introspection and self-reflection about, Am I truly embodying my faith and witness in Christ, in person, offline, in front of those that are well known and are “influencers,” those who might not have status as deemed by our larger culture? 

I feel so fascinated as a follower of Jesus, that when you follow Christ, the ways in which He engages in the presence of those who are who’s who and those who are who’s not, whether in the temple or whether out in the marketplace, whether He’s with Zacchaeus or whether He’s with powerful, religious rulers. There’s a sense of consistency and a righteousness that pursues after God’s kingdom, that I think is so fascinating and so important for us to highlight. 

If we’re all looking at a metaphorical mirror right now, we need to look at ourselves again and say, “How is it that I need to become more informed and informed and transformed into the likeness of Christ?” And not just the image of Christ that we want to project. And I think this is really important because whether we want to admit this or not, in my opinion, one of the oldest idolatries is shaping God or shaping Jesus into our own image. 

Maybe part of the reason why I have always appreciated the invitation to spend time in God’s Word on a regular basis is so that as we go about doing this work, we don’t lose ourselves in the blustery winds of our culture and times.

“Maybe part of the reason why I have always appreciated the invitation to spend time in God’s Word on a regular basis is so that as we go about doing this work, we don’t lose ourselves in the blustery winds of our culture and times.” – Eugene Cho 

Jesus Listens, October 27th: 

My great God, 

Teach me how to approach problems with a light touch. When my mind moves toward a problem area, I tend to focus on that situation so intensely that I lose sight of You. I pit myself against the difficulty as if I must conquer it immediately. My mind gears up for battle, and my body becomes tense and anxious. Unless I achieve total victory, I feel defeated. 

I know there is a better way! When a problem starts to overshadow my thoughts, please prompt me to bring the matter to You—talking it over with You and examining it in the Light of Your Presence. This puts some much-needed space between me and my concern, enabling me to see it more from Your perspective. Sometimes I even end up laughing at myself for being so serious about something that’s insignificant. 

I realize I will always face trouble in this world. But more importantly, I will always have You with me—equipping me to handle whatever I encounter. Help me approach problems with a light touch by viewing them in Your revealing Light. 

In Your brilliant Name, Jesus, 

Amen

Narrator: You can find Eugene’s book, Thou Shalt Not Be a Jerk, wherever you buy books. 

If you’d like to hear more stories about how we can live out our faith in all that we do, check out our interview with Emily Chang.

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Next week: Michael Hyacinthe

Next time on the Jesus Calling Podcast, we’ll hear from veteran and media company founder Michael Hyacinthe. Michael shares how he’s harnessed the power of art and technology to heal, and how he helps others do the same. 

Michael Hyacinthe: I know that I am not alone, that I have the Creator that is with me and that is guiding me through good and bad. I think we all need to know that. We are not alone in this journey, and acknowledging that through Him, we can get through things.