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During times of trial, a standing joke with my family and myself has been, “Please don’t mention Moses. It seems as if this man had an incredibly long and tiring road with ungrateful people and fair-weather fans (sound familiar?). As if this was not enough, Moses and his clan finally reached the edge of the Promised Land and wandered for forty years, not being allowed to enter. Is this the most encouraging devotional you have ever read?
Often it seems like life itself is a race—a rat race that sucks away time while I grasp at minutes in desperation. I’m an endurance athlete; I train for hours to shave seconds off my race time. I’m a busy American. Another paycheck will come, but each moment, once past, is gone forever. Time is my best friend and my fiercest enemy; it is my greatest challenge. At least it was until my husband re-worded his financial motto from “It ain’t our money,” to “It ain’t our time.”
Athletes today have an overwhelming amount of choices in what to drink while they work out. Sports drinks come in multiple brands, colors, and flavors. Water isn’t just water, now it has vitamins, minerals, and other benefits. Hardly anyone drinks plain water because sports drinks are advertised as a way to get an edge on the competition before, during, and after a workout or game.
Water was important to the people of the Old Testament. It was a daily struggle to go to the well and get enough water to cook, clean, drink, and bathe. A refreshing underground spring was a valuable resource. Many had to settle for a “cistern,” which was a hole dug in a rock to catch rainwater.
Former Brooklyn Dodger Carl Erskine, FCA Skateboarding, FCA President Les Steckel
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I remember as a child, my school bus would arrive at an early time. Once I saw the bus coming, I would walk to the end of our lane and get on it. I didn’t have to wave my arms or plead for the driver to stop. I didn’t have to beg the driver, make payment, or qualify to get on that bus. I just walked up three steps, went to the back, and sat down. I never worried about the ability of the bus to transport me, nor was I concerned about finding a seat. I didn’t think about the bus being mechanically safe or the driver being certified. All I had to do was get on. If the bus driver asked me to sit down or stop throwing things, I did. He knew what was best for me, was concerned about my safety, and was determined to help me reach my destination.
1 – This is the sort of situation a competitor dreams about.
2 – Suffering and success – they go together.
A bicycle kick in itself is pretty mystifying, considering the player begins the kick with his back facing the intended target. He then hurls his head and upper body backward toward the ground while his feet and legs whip up into the place his upper body was. All of these acrobatics are an attempt to accurately strike a flying soccer ball.
Imagine executing that kind of kick while your team is trailing 1-0 in the waning seconds of a highly competitive Superliga final match.
I am a sprinter, both literally and spiritually. When I played sports, I did not have a great amount of ability, but I could run… fast. I ran fast on the football field, on the basketball court, anywhere I played. I really don’t recall ever competing against someone who could outrun me. You see, a guy can run pretty fast when he’s scared!
There are spiritual races, too. Shireen, my wife, has reminded me several times that life is a marathon, not a sprint. She knows about the temptation I have to sprint. Sprinters become tired very quickly. It’s unreasonable to think they can run for long periods of time. In contrast, a distance runner must pace himself so he can finish the race.
Ever since I was a little kid, I always wondered what it takes to be an Olympian. What type of characteristics does it take? What kind of person do you have to be? Now that I am one, I’m very humbled because it’s not like I feel like I’m so great or that I’ve done anything that special to deserve to get to the Olympics. I feel like the thing I’ve done best is I’ve just gotten back up from all of the lickings I’ve taken, both physically and spiritually. I’m a pretty black-and-white person. I’ll try to live the best I can, then I’ll mess up and fall, and I’ll get all down and upset with myself.
Every Friday morning at Hardee Junior High School in Wauchula, Fla., more than 750 students can be found crammed into the auditorium for an FCA Huddle meeting. In a little more than half an hour, school will begin for the day. But for now, in the junior high auditorium amid the backpacks, textbooks and hundreds of sixth, seventh and eighth graders, praise music blares, and the message of Christ's redeeming love is preached.
Almost 200 students have given their lives to Christ during the morning meetings.
Los Angeles has so many potential distractions and pitfalls for young kids growing up there. But, in my own life, because God had blessed me with a solid faith in Him through the instruction of my mother, I was able to avoid most of them.
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Failure threatened to expose Coach Scott Glabb. He slumped against the door frame of the Santa Ana High School wrestling room and watched the last of his wrestlers exit the school after practice. But could he even call it a practice? He’d wasted the first 15 minutes searching for the keys to his office after his athletes had locked him out … again. And when he’d finally gotten to the wrestling room, he’d found that half of his team was missing. Of the few who had shown up, two were set to exchange blows over allegedly stolen wrestling shoes, and one appeared to be intoxicated.
Coach Jones’s team lost a couple of games that had seemed like sure wins, and the wolves were howling for a change. Coach Jones had allowed his disappointment to turn to discouragement, and he was feeling pretty low. Right about that time a friend came to him and quoted Samuel Johnson: “Great works are not accomplished by strength, but by perseverance.” His friend added, “You are doing a great work and it’s a lot bigger than football.
How can we show proper respect for our teammates, coaches, opponents, and even the officials? Why should we even care about that? Peter understood the value of showing proper honor and respect to people and he wrote about it in this Scripture. Take a moment to read it again, this time out loud.
The life of Pro Football Hall of Famer Bruce Matthews has been epitomized by resilience and perseverance, stability and strength. The stats he produced as a fixture on the Houston-turned-Tennessee offensive line are legendary, and his name is a consistent example for line coaches who seek to inspire greatness in their athletes. And if those athletes never had the opportunity to see Matthews play, a quick reading of his accomplishments makes their jaws drop in awe.
I was thinking overnight about some of the qualities that enable sports chaplains and sports mentors to be most effective in their work with coaches and competitors. One of those is empathy. Empathy is the ability to see situations from another’s point of view, to even feel what the other is feeling. Empathy shapes our attitudes and aligns our hearts and emotions to be most effective at communicating God’s heart in any given situation.
The Fellowship of Christian Athletes is the largest Christian campus ministry in the world. It is on more campuses than the next three largest campus ministries combined. In the past year, FCA reached more than 350,000 people on over 7,100 campuses and worked with more than 46,000 coaches and athletes at camps across the globe.
The numbers for this ministry are staggering. Still, even though it's been around since 1954, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes is a mystery to many. Even the late Tom Landry, legendary Dallas Cowboys’ coach and lifetime trustee of FCA, used to call FCA “America’s best-kept secret.”
Most people have at least heard of it, but some of them can’t really say for sure what FCA is all about.
Expectations are everywhere. In sports, every person has expectations, most of which go unmet. There are so many expectations and so much disappointment when they are not met.
Dr. Joe Stowell spoke recently about expectations. He shared three areas in which we deal with unmet expectations: people around us, our place in life, and the future. We tend to create expectations each day that set us up for potential problems.
It seems the psalmist’s heart, informed by God’s truth, was the source of his wise speech and security in life. Many coaches rest their security in their players’ abilities, which serves them well until injuries occur. Other coaches find security in knowledge of their sport or the experience of their coaching staff. Others appear fully confident, but are then found to be inferior in competition. In each case, their confidence easily turns to anxiety because of the nature of their source.
Our heart can be a limitless source of peace and confidence if we maintain our relationship with Christ through careful study of the Bible. Reading the Scriptures regularly deposits the law of God in our hearts and will keep our steps from slipping.
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