Gaming at Parkside

"Let's get a bear hug," my captain says to the team at the end of practice. We've spent two weeks training hard, practicing, competing amongst ourselves, working on formation, and sprinting...lots and lots of sprinting.

Today we come together as a team to win a game. No longer competing in a practice against each other, but we come together to compete as a whole against the other team. We are confident in each other's strengths. Ignorant of our weaknesses. Fearless of our opponent's strengths.

"We're not the team that can just show up and win games," my coach says. "We have to out work every team--that is how we will win." Patience with the ball, always looking for opportunities to get a goal.

So how is this like life? Can a sport translate to somehow relate to my relationship with an all-powerful, supreme, sovereign God--who ultimately has control over even this, soccer?

In 1 Corinthians 9:24-26, Paul says, "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air."

The opponent is real. The competition is tough. Yet with Christ, victory over sin is sure--and the prize, Paul says...is imperishable.

So in competing on the soccer field it is a joy to remember that to win is great. To win is good. To win is exciting. But even this, a victory and its praises are perishable. Yet I know a man, Jesus Christ who purchased a sinful people with His blood on the cross--conquering sin and death...and whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.

This is the imperishable victory. Looking to Jesus Christ for a righteousness we can never obtain. He is our mediator that makes it possible to actually know God, by the Holy Spirit revealing things to us in the Bible.

Today I step onto a field to compete to win a game against Parkside, to the praise of God's glorious grace. Recognizing that competition points me to Jesus...above all else. Because He conquered the greatest battle of all, the sin of the nations.

May Christ be made much of in and through this soccer game with this mindset. To know that it is good to receive the perishable wreath, but far better and satisfying to receive the imperishable prize in Christ Jesus.