Ready for Game Day?
My high school basketball coach was as intense as an Army drill sergeant. Anyone who knew Kevin McDaniel would compare him to the legendary Bobby Knight, the former men’s basketball coach of the Indiana Hoosiers. “Coach McD”, as we called him, would even admit that Knight had a strong influence on his fiery coaching style. I remember practices where Coach McD would have us run a drill or play twenty plus times in a row until he saw the level of execution he desired in a real game.
Though we would sometimes grumble over his perfectionist tendencies, our whining would turn to gratitude as we savored victory. We were like a well-oiled machine as each player knew his role within the framework of the team. Win or lose, we never doubted the fact that our coach did his job to prepare us for game day.
Shouldn’t our experience on God’s team, the Church, be similar? We read in Hebrews 5:14 (NAS) that “…solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil…” Those words “practice” and “trained” imply preparation for game day.
And when is it game day in the spiritual life? That’s right, EVERYDAY!
Our enemy and his team never take a day off, always trying to set us up for defeat. When we know the Word of God and the God of that Word intimately we become a major threat to the opposition. We become sharp and sensitive to hearing God’s voice and game plan for each new day. Unfortunately the Church is being trained more by the voices in our media choices than by the voice of God. We’ve become more familiar with Thursday evening’s TV show lineup or the playlists on our iPods than we are with the words of the Author of Life. We have our hearts tuned more to the wisdom of the world than the supernatural wisdom that our Creator is waiting to pour out to us (James 1:5).
What would happen if the Church across this country of ours decided to turn off the TV for a month in order to intentionally fill that time (4.5 hrs/day on avg.) with a sincere seeking of the Lord? One month out of twelve or merely 8% of our total TV time. Is there a chance we would hear something from our Coach that could totally change the momentum of this spiritual war we find ourselves in? And even if we did hear that divine directive, would we put it to practice? Would we obey?
The clock is ticking. The pressure is on. You and I are well equipped.
With our God, victory is in our grasp!
