Resilient

This weekend I was reminded of a lesson I’d learned years ago that is worth repeating.

You see, this weekend I was at a AAU basketball tournament with my family watching Noah’s 7^th grade team play their games.  On Saturday they went 1-1, playing well in the first game and they laying a complete egg in the second game.  In fact, it was probably the worst they’d played together as a team in two seasons.  On Sunday we had our first game against a team with a pretty good group of kids that were a little taller than us at some positions.  The previous game’s results had no effect on our kids as they came out firing on all cylinders and quickly took the lead that they never relinquished. 

The boys did have to fight in that game, as everything was going against them.  The one ref called everything on our kids, the other team had a ton of fans in the stands, and it was our boys against the world.  Yet they continued to battle, even as the game got close at the end.  They were resilient and withstood everything going against them to pull out the victory.

How often in our lives do we have everything going against us and we just give up?  It seems to me that today’s society sees giving up as an easy alternative to fighting through things.  Couples divorce when life gets rough all the time.  People often quit a job when it gets hard, and students drop out of school or drop classes all the time.  It doesn’t seem like anyone is willing to go the extra mile when the going gets tough, as they get going – in the opposite direction.

This week I want to remind you to be resilient.  Your relationship with Christ will be tested over and over again.  The enemy will continually search out a weakness, and once it’s found he will attack.  It could be your relationships or job.  Instead of just giving up, fight back.  Pray, read your Bible, seek counsel from a pastor or friend.  But, never give up.  Be resilient like this AAU basketball team was this weekend.  A life with Christ is 100% better than one without Him, and it’s worth the fight!

The Underdog

During the NCAA tournament this year I’ve been a fan of the underdog teams.  Sure they killed off a number of my predictions for the tournament, but overall the underdog teams are what make the tournament as much fun as it is to watch. 

Have you ever been considered an underdog in your life?  Maybe you played a sport and your team was an underdog.  Maybe you wouldn't consider yourself the best candidate for a job but somehow got it?  Maybe you beat a disease like cancer where the chances you were given by the doctor were less than on your side?

God loves the underdog.  Take the story of David and Goliath in 1 Samuel.  David was a small teenage boy when he took on the nine-foot giant Goliath.  Goliath wasn’t afraid of David or his slingshot, but he found a way to beat the giant and took full advantage.  David’s faith in God allowed him to look at Goliath in a way others had not.  To David, Goliath was just another person who had a weakness to be found.

My point today is that if we look at our problems and impossible situations from God's perspective, we realize that God will fight for us and with us. When we put things into proper perspective, we see more clearly and we can fight more effectively.  We can beat things like cancer, or a team that has been overlooked can take out a favored team. When you have faith in God, all things are possible.

Determination

As I’ve mentioned in this space before, I coach a fourth-grade boys' basketball team.   This past weekend was our final weekend of the season, a weekend of tournament that involved seven other fourth-grade teams.

The first game on Saturday the boys played pretty well but not up to their potential.  Yet, they battled through a number of mistakes and won the game.

A few hours later we got our second shot for the day.  I’m not sure if it was the long layoff or what, but the boys came out with no emotion at all in that game.  They really lacked any fire, and that lack of fire caused them to lose a close game by 3.  I then told the boys after the game that if they don’t want to be there then don’t come back on Sunday, but if they want to give me everything they have and a fire to win, then show up and we’ll get to work.

So we come back to the tournament on Sunday and all the boys show up, and they have a different look in their eyes.  They are all focused on beating a team that is undefeated all season long.  A team that hasn’t scored fewer than 40 points in any game they’ve played this season.  A team that had beat us 44-19 earlier in the season.  Not only did we take the fight to this team, but we had them on the ropes throughout the game.  We were losing 4-2 at half time and only gave up 20 points to them in the entire game.  No, we didn’t win, but that effort allowed us to win a tie breaker that put us in the semifinals.

That semifinal game pitted us against a team that has already beat us twice this year, both times in very close games.  We’ve battled them very tough every time we’ve played them and this game was no different.  My boys worked extremely hard, and again a lack of putting the ball through the rim was what killed our chances.  We lost by three points in yet another close game.

My point in rehashing the weekend with you is to show you that with hard work anything is possible.  This team has a record this season of 3-8.  Yet, that doesn’t tell you the whole story.  They were determined to get better and determined to fight for all they were worth.  Week after week this season they wanted to get better, and although we didn’t often come out on the winning side of things, it didn’t slow these boys down.  They kept working hard, and as they kept fighting week after week, they improved.  The final record might not show it, but they are a group of kids that the rest of the NOL better be ready to battle for years to come.

I will use this team as a reminder to myself to never give up and to continue to improve myself every day in my Christian walk.  If I continue to be determined to be better, then there is no stopping me in the future.  I have valued the time that I’ve spent with these boys and am proud of each and every one of them.  As I told them on Sunday, it’s only eight months until we start it all over again.  They need to keep working on their own until we get the team back together again in November…a fact that I know will be followed by all of these determined boys.

Coaching

Recently I started coaching my son Andrew’s 4^th grade travel basketball team.  Ok, not real recently, as we’ve now played 2 three games and have been practicing since the week before Thanksgiving.  I really wanted to coach this team because I really love the game of basketball and enjoy spending time with my son.  Plus, I have so much free time anyway….lol.

To be honest, when we first started practices these kids were really rough.  They have varying amounts of skill and were all coming from different backgrounds in the game of basketball.  The plan quickly became to start from square one and build them together as a team, each learning the same fundamentals at the same time.  After we worked on putting in that foundation we then continued to build on it.  You see, none of the kids has ever played “real basketball”, as I was calling it.  This level of basketball is set up like a high school varsity team’s play instead of the earlier levels that give just the basics.

So, now that we’ve played the three game the kids have had a good taste of what basketball is really all about.  They continue to learn and want to keep getting better.  You can see it in their eyes...the will to improve every practice and every game.  It’s really a cool thing to see and very welcome to anyone who has ever coached.

I mention this today because I have to imagine that this is the same kind of look that God is looking for in our eyes.  That will to be better than who we are and to continually make progress.  Maybe we won’t win every day, but the desire to make ourselves more than we already are has to light up His heart.

So, if you think you are ready for some of God’s coaching, just open His word and find the best gameplan for your life.

Determination

This past weekend I was assistant coaching my oldest son’s sixth grade basketball team in a tournament that was going to end our season.  We’d have a rough season overall, only winning our first game of the year and none since then.  As coaches we’d felt that we had a chance in many of the games, but there was a hurdle that the team just couldn’t get past, something we couldn’t figure out ourselves.

So we go into the round robin part of the tournament, where we were going to play the other three teams in our side of the bracket.  Our first opponent is a team from our league who had beat us by over 20 points in both games that we’d played them previously.  The boys started out pretty well, but we found ourselves down at halftime.  We made some adjustments, but that didn’t seem to help in the end and we lost that first game.  Then the second game we played a team that we hadn’t played previously, and although we as coaches thought we could win, we got ourselves in a hole and we saw that familiar look on the boy’s faces – defeat.  That look was a premonition as it ended up that we lost to them as well. 

So at the end of the first day we were 0-2, with one more game to play.  The head coach wasn’t gentle with the boys after the first game, saying pretty much exactly how I felt as well.  We both knew that the boys had all the talent in the world, but they weren’t handling adversity well and we didn’t know if they had the will to win.  It was pretty much laid out that if they weren’t going to be there to win, then to not come back on Sunday to play. 

Well, it was Sunday’s game time, and all of the boys were there.  It seemed like they were different people when they showed up.  They looked determined to win this game, and they were going to do what it took to get a victory.  They had their ups and downs throughout the game, with the lead going back and forth between the two teams.  Then a big change occurred.  The boys believed they could win the game.  They weren’t going to let anyone take this victory from them, and eventually with that determination came something that they really needed…a victory.  They finished the season at something like 2-10, but the fact that their hard work paid off seemed to give them the feeling that the season was a success.

I tell you this story from the weekend because I think this mirrors the spiritual lives that Christians live.  We work hard at the beginning and get an early victory in our lives, be it turning from a sin that has been with us for years or many other victories that would can obtain in Christ.  The problem with that early victory is that often times that gets the enemy's attention and then we have to deal with adversity.  Often times that tests our character, and those hard times can lead us to feeling defeated and possibly even to giving up on the one gift that we’ve all been given in our lives that means the most:  salvation.  But, God is there coaching us and telling us to show up and get back out there and finish the game.  He doesn’t want us to quit.  He wants us to go out there and keep scraping and clawing our way to the top, knowing full well that the Holy Spirit will be there with us throughout our battles.  God never promised that our lives would be easy when we accepted Jesus into our lives.  He never said that the enemy wouldn’t attack, in fact it’s written that the exact opposite would happen.  Our goal, as Christians, should be to keep gaining victories no matter how hard we have to work.  We can’t give up, and being a Christian and living your life for Him isn’t for wimps.   

Just as this sixth grade team did this weekend, they fought through the adversity with the determination to reach their goal of getting a victory.  Now, we as Christians are called to do the same.  Go out and get victory after victory for Christ.  Go out determined not to let the enemy stop you from getting to your goals, no matter what is thrown in the way.

The Cheap Seats

Lately I’ve spent a few nights watching some high school basketball. I really enjoy the game as it’s, at least to me, very pure at the HS level. The kids are taught to play the right way and they work together as a team. What I like about it best is you really get a good look from the stands at a team’s strengths and weaknesses, at least if you know what you are looking at.

That leads me to today’s point: Often a weakness can easily be seen from the cheap seats.

Let me explain. As I watch the game I often find players on a team that seem a tad weak at one kind of defense or another. What I really love is when the coach for one of the teams sees the same thing and starts to exploit that weakness. The coach will direct his/her team to do things that will take full advantage of that weakness. They’ll keep attacking it until the other team makes an adjustment. In fact, to me that is the true beauty of the game, the chess match the coaches play in trying to gain their team an advantage, causing a disadvantage to the other team.

I mention all of this because many of us have weaknesses that are continually being exploited in our Christian walk. The devil attacks us over and over again the same way, and we fail to make the adjustment. Then, when we finally do adjust, the devil looks for another weakness to exploit. This is part of the day-to-day battle that we must fight, continually adjusting our weaknesses in order to keep the devil out of our lives.

How is your ability at making adjustments? Do you allow a weakness to continually be attacked, or do you work to keep that from happening? Do you even know what your weaknesses are, or do you need someone else sitting in the cheap seats to help you see what you are missing? If you know the weaknesses and keep adjusting, good for you! If you need help seeing what is happening, then find a friend, prayer partner, spouse, and pray about it. Find the weaknesses and adjust. Your spiritual life will be stronger because of it.

Teamwork

As some of you may know, I play basketball in the Norwalk city league with a group of guys from Calvary Baptist church. I only knew two of the guys on the team before the one practice we had prior to the start of the season, and it took a bit for us to build any chemistry. The first few games saw us winning thanks to whoever taking over that particular game. In fact, up to last night we had lost only one game and had won 5.

So last night we went into the game, and due to some injuries and other commitments, we had only five of us at the game. To add onto that, the game was at the old rec (Monroe St. Gym) that is still under construction. They are putting windows in, which right now are covered by plywood. So, the effect is that it’s freezing in the main entry area, and it's overcompensated with the heaters running very hot – making the court almost a sauna. Oh, and did I mention the other team had 9 guys present?

So we play the game and work very hard to keep it close or take the lead whenever we can. We get through by using our time-outs and working together as a team. By this point in the season we all know our roles on the team and run the defense very well to the point where we all can communicate very well and let each other know where the offensive players are. The other team, though, didn’t have that same chemistry. From the outset of the game they were complaining to one another and definitely didn’t trust each other at all. If one guy got beat no one came to help.

So we come down to about 5 minutes left to go in the game. They had been trying to run on us to make us tired and it had been pretty effective, although we were tied at this point. That is when our teamwork took over the game. Our team fought through the tiredness and minor pains from the game and worked hard on offense. We looked for one another, and if someone was making shots they he got the ball until he stopped making it. Defense was also very tough, and we managed a good number of steals. The opposing team, on the other hand, fell apart. Their nagging at each other came to a boiling point. Guys on their team were yelling at each other on the bench, and puling themselves out of the game because they didn’t want to play with one guy, etc. They ended up all trying to win the game themselves, and that ended any chance they had. We won the game by 8 points, a well-fought victory for our team.

I mention this because as Christians we’re all a team. One person may take the lead from time to time to get the team over a hurdle, but everyone is important. We all have a role in order for the team to be successful. It doesn’t matter if the odds are stacked against us, the team as a whole – when working together – can overcome any obstacle. My question for you is, which team would you rather play on? The team that has everyone working together towards a common goal, or one where everyone is playing his own game? This is the game that we’re all playing every day, the game of life. What is your role? What team are you on? How hard are you willing to work? If you haven’t’ already, join the team! Ask me any time, I’ll help you find what you need to do to get on the Christian team.