The Top of the World!

One night, after the Cass Lake High School football season of 1978, I laid in my bed and I prayed ferverently, “God, please let me play on a State Championship football team.”

We'd just finished a lack luster season, about par for a perrenial loser. The Cass Lake High team from two years prior had made it into the State Tournament. It had been so rare and exciting that I wanted our team to do it again, only better. I remember begging God to be part of a successful football program.

I guess there was a joke on me. I didn’t realize that God was gonna move my family to Arizona to make it happen.

In the Fall of 1980 our team in Arizona was completing a second straight undefeated season my senior year. I remember walking off the field from the last play of winning the State Championship game and looking at the cheering crowd and looking up at the lights over the football field and thinking, “This is it? That’s all there is?”

I remember that I’d been expected to be transported to a higher level of grace and confidence and existence and now, “Crap!” it was still just me, walking off the field from another game. We walked into the locker room and our coach gave us one of the best locker room speeches I’ve ever heard. He said (as best I remember):

“People are telling you that you’re champions. I say we still don’t know if you’re champions. In 10 years we’ll know whether you’re champions by whether you’re a good husband and father. We’ll see if you’re taking a role in your community and whether you’re helping others. We’ll see if you’re serving God and following Him.”

“Tonight you won a football game. In 10 years we’ll know whether you’re champions.”

That really hit home for me.

Satan wants us to think his way will lead to that elevated level of existence. The right spouse... the right relationship... the right job... the right car... enough money... If we build our lives on the world in just the right way, happiness and peace will follow...

...and that is a lie.

The Bible tell us that our walk is supposed to hurt sometimes and that we will face defeat and failure. Remember, even "the house built on the rock" had to face the flood! God has promised that Her will use our trials to build us and change us and make us grow! This has become a favorite passage to me:

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.

And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen."

- I Peter 5:6-11

Here's to "...strong, firm and steadfast!" May we take our eyes off of ourselves long enough to hope for that.