People watch the Olympics for two sports: swimming (how many medals can we conceivably give Michael Phelps before is neck breaks), and gymnastics – because there’s nothing more exciting to a sedentary society than undersized teenagers doing flips and twirls on equipment the rest of us would fall off of immediately.

Recently, someone tweeted a six second video of 22-year-old Aly Raisman’s floor routine opening, a pass of incredible flips (which I found later online).

Aly replied that she’s spent 8 years – 8 years! – training this pass.

All that practice at the gym, all the trips and falls she may have made early on and here she is on the biggest stage of her life. And she nails it.

And that’s how you win Olympic gold… and how you walk the Christian life.

Christian parenting doesn’t start when kids are 14 and you realize they’re becoming adults. It starts when they’re babies*. I still remember the lullaby my mother would sing me when I was very young: “What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

You won’t be able to say “no” to the large temptations if you can’t say “no” to the smaller ones. Saying yes to hard-core pornography starts by all the little “yes’s” to soft-core porn.

Leadership doesn’t begin at the podium or pulpit of a megachurch, it starts in the fellowship hall setting up folding chairs for prayer meeting.

Hercules had to clean the Augean stables before he created the Olympic games.

Start young. Start small. Start with the dirty.

“Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings; He will not stand before obscure men.” (Proverbs 22:29, NASB)

*Yes, Children raised in Christian homes walk away from the faith. There is no formula, but there are godly principles parents can follow.