Fast Food Beliefs

When I hear about coaches getting fired after a year or two at a school it breaks my heart. I once told an athletic director that it would take four years to turn the program around to contend for a league championship. That was not what he wanted to hear and I did not get the job. In our society we want everything right now. Actually we wanted it yesterday. We drive through to get our food. At most fast food places they do not even hold a cup anymore to put your drink in it. They put it on a belt of some sort, it goes under the fountain, they push a button and the drink comes out. I suppose it is faster. I am not sure it is better but it is faster. In our world of sports it is not different. It is almost rare to see a Sports Center show without something about performance enhancing substances or some other way that an athlete or a coach is trying to get to the top faster. That is not what sports was meant to be. A few years ago I read Coach John Heisman’s book on football. You might recall that Coach Heisman has a little award named after him. In the book, Coach Heisman never once used the win. He talked about character and building young men into quality men. Isn’t that what sports should be about? When we compare sports to our walk with God, the same is true. There are no short cuts. You can not take a shot or a pill and grow closer to God quicker. You have to put in the time and the effort. It will not happen overnight. There will be tests and trials. There will be hard times. In the end those hard times are what make the good times that much more sweeter. Today make it a point to put the same amount of effort into your relationship with Jesus as you do into other relationships in your life. What would your marriage look like if you were looking for short cuts? What would your relationships with friends look like if you did not put time into them? Our relationship with Jesus is the same way. We have to grow it like any other and that takes time.

Just Do It

Nike sold a lot of shoes with the slogan “Just Do It”. Now I am not a bible scholar or a schooled professional minister, but I think Nike should give some church some where some amount of money because they did not come up with it. The VCU basketball team took the quote to heart in the upset win over Kansas in the NCAA basketball tournament. Every coach goes into each game with a certain game plan. The idea is that you come up with a plan and put your players in position to basically win the game. The catch is the players have to follow the game plan. They have to “Just Do It”. The VCU players did just that. They listened to their coach and they followed his game plan. Well, God has a game plan for us. In James we read that we are not supposed to just read the game plan but we are to put it into practice also. If the VCU players would have just read and listened to the coach’s game plan and not put it into practice they have not have come out on top. It is good to read the bible, God’s Game Plan, but if we don’t put it into practice it does us very little good. If we read on in James 1 we see James telling people that we listen but do it we are like a man that forgets what he looks like after he has just looked into a mirror. In the last few words of James 1:25 James tells us that when we read God’s Game Plan and put it into action we will be blessed for what we do. Just like the VCU basketball team we will profit from following God’s Game Plan. Every coach wants to win. Every coach puts together a game plan that will give his or her team the best opportunity to win, be blessed. We have the perfect coach in God. When we are only readers of the word and not doers of the word, we short change the plan that God has for us. We must be compelled to put His plan into action in our daily lives.

Don’t leave my side.

I heard this a lot when I was a freshman in college. The conversation was pretty much one sided and it went something like this, “If you want to get on the field, don’t leave my side. When you are not in there, stay right next to me. When I need a defensive lineman, I am only going to yell once.” I thought it was such a good coaching technique that I used it myself when I coached. I usually had one or two players following me around like lost puppies. When I read James 4:8 I am reminded of these days. God tells us that when we come near Him, He will come near to us. In the game of life we will all be on the field. There will come a day when we are put into circumstances that will define us as humans and Christians. It is during these times, just like critical times in athletic contests, that we had better be ready. Athletes get ready for these crunch times by spending time and drawing near to their coach. Shouldn’t we do the same with our God? Jeremiah 30:17 tells us that God will heal us and restore our health. When the time comes when we are tempted, when the time comes that we know we are in a battle for God, shouldn’t we be as healthy as we can possibly be? In Psalm 23:3 we read about God refreshing our souls. As coaches when we put athletes into games, we are counting on them to be fresh and ready to get the job done. When step onto the field for Jesus, He expects us to be as fresh as we can be. In the end, I always wanted to be on the field. I always wanted my athletes to want to be on the field. I also wanted to be as fresh and in shape as possible so I could give all that I had for my team. Shouldn’t we want the same from ourselves when we step into the battle for Jesus?