Strength
The first thing you notice is his size. He is head and shoulders above everyone. And his shoulders – they are wider than the barn door. He often wears shorts to church (ours is a relaxed fellowship!) and that is when you realize his thighs are like tree trunks.
He stands with the musical ministry team as the service starts. You cannot miss him. He has a good soloist voice. His four-year-old daughter Sally runs up to her dad on the platform and effortlessly he swings her up and sits her on his outstretched bicep without missing a note of the solo. She stays there right throughout the song session. He doesn’t seem to notice. Any other man would have dropped her to the floor immediately but Stuart just keeps singing praises. After all in the Gym at the weights, he can lift 345 kilos!
At the Greenpoint Christian School where he teaches, all the young men are respectful. He is a man like no other they know. Since 2003 in the World Masters Championship male 40+ division he has been the gold medalist and record holder and ranked number one in the world in the shot put, No 2 in the world and record holder in the weight pentathlon, and No 3 in the world in the discus. In 2003 he won all five gold medals in the Shot, Discus, Hammer throw, Weight and Weight Pentathlon, just as he did in the world Championships in 2002. Every year since 2000, he has won the Australian and NSW Thrower of the Year and in 2000 won the Australian Sports Medal for Services to Sport in Australia. This is one serious athlete. Currently at 44 years of age he is better than ever in his record throws and is currently the 2007/8 Australian Open Bronze medalist and NSW Open champion winning gold in the Shot Put.
At a men’s dinner at our church recently Stuart said, “It’s seems an odd thing to say but long before I won bronze at the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh I knew that I was going to retire. Usually those types of decisions are made after the event but I was sure in my own mind, months before, that this was the right decision to make.
Although I was a good shot putter in high school, cricket and rugby were my first loves in sport. I really only took athletics seriously once I left school in 1981.
I began to put everything into my training as a thrower and success came quite quickly. Within a few years I was the Australian Junior (U/20) champion and record holder. I achieved my first ambition of representing Australia when I captained an Australian Junior team on a tour of the USA.
I began to set my goals even higher. As I moved into the senior ranks, my sights were set on Olympic Gold. I wanted to be the first Australian to win gold in a throwing event for Australia. I had plans to win some Commonwealth Games Gold medals along the way. Soon I was the Australian Senior champion and record-holder.
However, all of this came at a cost to my Christian faith.
Like many thousands of others I made a commitment to Christ at the Billy Graham Crusade in 1979 while in Year 10. Sadly, my growth as a Christian proved to be short-lived. As athletics grew in importance in my life, my relationship with Jesus began to run a distant second. I came to love the training, the camaraderie and, most importantly, the competition of athletics more than anything else. In the throwing circle I was the best. I loved that feeling!
The turning point came when I went to a friend’s 21st party. When the speeches came, she thanked her parents and then said, “But most of all, I want to thank the Lord Jesus Christ for being my friend, my Lord and my Saviour.”
I realised that, while I still called myself a Christian, I couldn’t have done what she’d done. Her simple testimony was a powerful kick in the pants for me. I knew I needed to get my life with Jesus sorted out. I spent the whole of the next week with my head in Mark’s Gospel. The question in my mind was the same as that on the lips of the disciples after Jesus calmed the storm (Mark 4:41): “Who is this man that even the wind and the waves obey him?”
As I read, Jesus became real to me in a way that he had never been before. Now he was a real person who lived, laughed, cried and got angry. But most of all he was someone who loves me so much that he was prepared to suffer the agony of hell on the cross so that I might not. He was bigger and stronger than me! Someone whom I could, and should, call ‘Lord’.
Over the next few months, it became clear to me that my relationship with Jesus was much more important than my athletics. Becoming a disciple of Christ was now my biggest goal and, as a young inexperienced Christian, I saw that my love for my sport and all that went with it was pulling me in the opposite direction. For me, at that time in my Christian life, I could not handle the two conflicting priorities in my life at the same time. Paul’s words to Timothy were very important to me at this time,
“For physical exercise is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come” (1 Tim 4:8-9)
I knew that I had a decision to make. I chose to walk away from athletics.
Many years later and much wiser, I am now part of the athletics scene once again. For the past 10 years I have been a chaplain to athletics in Australia, helping Christian athletes to work through the issues that I found so difficult when I was young and stay in the sport they love, as well as reaching out to others with the saving message of Jesus Christ. I have had wonderful opportunities ministering to athletes at major events around the world at Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, and World Athletics Championships. Often at these events I feel like the athletes minister to me just as often as I minister to them.
Back in 2000 some friends encouraged me to start competing again. I didn’t take much convincing after I realized that I was now old enough to compete in Masters sport. There was a whole new set of challenges, records and titles before me. Masters sport is the only sport where you look forward to getting older because you move up age groups every 5 years! Soon I was hooked. I approached it with the same enthusiasm and competitive nature that I had before but with a desire to bring glory to God in everything this time.
And God has been very gracious to me this time around. I am still competitive at the elite Open level in Australia. Last year, I missed out on the Commonwealth Games team by only 22cm – I threw further to miss out on making the 2006 team than I did when I made the 1986 team.
This season I won the NSW Open Shot and came 3rd at the Open Nationals in Brisbane – only later learning that I had actually thrown with a stress fracture in my lower back. I am also the World Champion for my Masters age group in Shot Put – a title I won 2 years ago in San Sebastian, Spain.
I now have dozens of medals won in Open and Masters Competitions over the last 7 years– but it’s interesting – most of those medals sit in boxes gathering dust in my garage. One of the things that I have been very mindful of, this time around, is keeping this winning thing in perspective. When Paul wrote his 2nd letter to Timothy, when Paul’s ministry was just about over and he was soon to be martyred for Jesus sake, he said these words to him:
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” (2 Timothy 4:7-8)
In Paul’s day, when they had sporting competitions, they didn’t award medals to the winners they gave them crowns or wreaths instead which they wore on their head. Paul is literally saying here that, at the end of his life – the race of faith that he has run – the thing that he is looking forward to most is receiving the Crown of Righteousness that God has made ready for him. Nothing else matters now for him but being with God and receiving this Gold Medal, for it is a symbol that God has said, “Yes, you shall enter my heaven.”
The gold medals that I have sitting in boxes at home are medals I have worked hard and trained hard for – in the weight room and on the track. But they might as well be lumps of lead compared to this Gold Medal. They pale into insignificance compared to it. And it’s not just Paul who is going to get this medal – it will be given to all Christians.
But the funny thing is that this Gold Medal that is the most precious of all is the one medal in life that we cannot work for. No matter how hard we try we cannot achieve “righteousness” with God. We cannot get right with God by ourselves. It is only through the death and resurrection of Jesus – to pay the price / to suffer the punishment for our sins – that we are made right with God. And this righteousness is a gift that we receive from God as a gift – by trusting in the Lord Jesus as our saviour. There we will hear God say “Well done, good and faithful servant, come enter my heaven and live forever with me.” Just to picture that scene in my mind fills my heart with a joy and excitement that puts every other medal ceremony that I’ve been a part of in the shade.
If you trust in the Lord Jesus, then you will be a part of that heavenly medal ceremony too.”
I agree with Stuart. He is not the sort of man with whom you would disagree!
REV THE HON. DR GORDON MOYES, A.C., M.L.C.
