With the weather taking a turn for the worst this week, I have returned to cycling in the garage on my turbo trainer.

It’s not often sportsmen say something profound, but I was struck by an observation Mark Cavendish makes in the 3LC Sprinting DVD that I work out to.

When asked how much practice his team puts into the sprint lead-out train, Cav says “none”.

“The biggest thing you have is trust,” he says.

Cav trusts that each of his teammates cycling ahead of him will do the job necessary to get him to where he needs to be for the sprint finish. All he has to do is to watch the wheel in front of him.

Now nobody for one minute would suggest that professional cyclists do not train. Of course they do. Like mad. But Cav shares a key truth about teamwork – that you must trust each member of the team is responsible and capable of doing their job.

When competing in a field of professional athletes who all have the highest fitness levels and skills, the trust between team members is the thing that can gain those vital seconds which prove the difference between success and failure.

For Christians, this truth about teamwork is a vital one for trusting each other to help build up our communities – there can often be a handful of people in a church who are responsible for the majority of its activities, and who are reluctant to give up their ministries to others.

Such reluctance to share the load not only inhibits the growth of an effective team ethic than can help build community – it also betrays a lack of faith.

St. Paul writes “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure”.

This statement can seem a confusing and conflicting one – work out your own salvation, AND God is at work at in you? Who is doing the working out here? St. Paul’s answer is both.

A cyclist training harder than anyone has ever trained before will still never get to the front of a bunch sprint without the support of a competent team that he trusts to get him there.

We can put in all the work we like – both in our spiritual lives and through actions displaying our Christian faith – but we can only go so far: we need to trust God to deliver the victories.

My English GCSE teacher Steve Moody, now a Baptist pastor in Luton, put it like this in a blog post today:

“There are always times when we feel like we can’t, when we feel that we have reached the end of our strength. At such moments what makes the difference is God’s involvement with us. We can’t, BUT we can- with God. This is the heart of God’s encouraging word to Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” We can’t but we can. We can but we can’t.”

Just like being a professional athlete, to be a follower of Jesus Christ is to follow a way of life that is a discipline – they weren’t called disciples for nothing, you know.

However, while we are called to make an effort, we are also called to recognise that we can only get so far through our own actions.

We need to trust that where we can’t, He can.