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In 2018, our football team traveled seven hours to Garden City, Texas to take on a top 10 public school. We were a team of mostly sophomores and juniors who had won a lower division private school title the year before but believed they had more to prove.
The purpose of this week one game for Sterling City was to "tune up" the engine of a team expected to compete for a state championship against an opponent that was not expected to get past halftime. Being a 45 point underdog did not phase our team; however, truth be told there was trepidation in the locker room before the game.
I can only imagine what was going through their minds. Did they deserve to be in this game? Would they be humiliated? Were the prognosticators correct?
The following year (2019), our team found ourselves on the same field, playing Rankin, the number one team in the state! Having won the private school state title the year before for the third year in a row with a 11-1 record we now had a seasoned "senior" team. Again, we were a 45 point underdog.
The next year (2020), our team did not have to travel far to compete against a top 10 program as we took on Calvert. They would finish their season losing to the eventual UIL state champs and be the only team to not lose by 45 points. Our team had finished the previous season 12-1 and were seeking our 4th consecutive state title.
We lost all three of these pivotal early season games.
These losses were the fuel for our future success. They pointed out our weaknesses and helped to focus our teams on what was needed to compete and dominate the rest of the season.
In Romans 3:8, Paul writes:
Why not say—as some slanderously claim that we say—‘Let us do evil that good may result’? Their condemnation is just!
What Paul is saying is part of being Jesus’ disciple means recognizing that even if we’re pursuing a healthy goal (like winning a championship), the way we get there, and who we become along the way, is just as important—if not more so—as where we end up.
We need to embrace the failures. Inoculating ourselves from them does not make us better. Easier opponents prevent us from knowing what we need to do to get better. All three of these losses pushed our players to do more in the off season, to practice with more purpose and to set a standard that ultimately dominated opponents.
Our culture will tell you there are shortcuts to success. They come in the form of drugs, technology and false prophets. Adderall will give you a false sense of success in staying focused, steroids will give you a false sense of strength, ChatGPT may allow you to pass classes but it will be done at the expense of learning and there are numerous theological options who embrace parts of scripture to formulate worldviews separate from God.
My prayer for all our athletes is that they form a relationship with God whereby they have no fear of the losses and seek to compete at the highest levels in all they do in life. I pray they understand that God has begun a good work in them and will magnify that work when they embrace Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
The greatest victory is a life with Jesus Christ at the helm. It produces an endwelling of the Holy Spirit who will come along side us so that we can count our losses as gains. Again, who we become along the way, is important as it is a reflection of where we will end up.
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