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.
