Our Sports Fandom and Our Walk with Christ

As a sports fan you experience a vast array of emotions cheering for your favorite team. You love your team dearly and always stand up for them. Through the good times when they’re competing for a championship and the bad times when you’re hope to just win a couple games, you love them. You learn to forget about the tough losses and the heartbreaks and hold onto the small moments or games when they made your proud. For us living in Iowa, it doesn’t matter if the Hawkeyes or the Cyclones lose every game as long as they beat the other team. In the midst of a bad season, you still claim them as your own and protect their name from everybody who badmouths them. You stay loyal to them through and through. Maybe you stay loyal because you really do love them unconditionally or maybe it’s because you’ve never been anything but a Yankee fan so how could you leave them. You’ve invested so much of your time, life, energy, and emotion into cheering for this team and staying up-to-date on whose on it you really couldn’t imagine your life without them. We become passionate about our team and ability to build relationships out of mutual love with other fans. Our passion leads to enthusiasm and often times we can be seen yelling at the tv in frustration or imagining what the team would look like if we were the GM (or coach) and in control of their destiny. It’s a wonderful roller coaster ride, but I wouldn’t trade it. There are somethings to be learned from our fandom though.

Passion

We as sports fans can be so passionate and obsessive it can be kind of uncomfortable for those around us. Passion is a beautiful thing in life and God gave us passions, but we also need to be cautious about our passions. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Sometimes we put such a huge emphasis on sports in our lives and on our sports teams that the beautiful passion God gave us turns into idolatry. We need to be careful where we are investing our time into because that’s where the essence of our heart appears. We have an uncanny ability to be passionate about a team of team of players who will never know our name or anything about us defending these people to the death if someone says something ill about them but what about Jesus. Why are we more inclined to defend a quarterback for our team caught in the wrong than defend the one who died for us so that we might truly be a live and live in freedom. It begs the question, are we passionate about Jesus? Do we see going to church as a chore? Do we see reading the Bible as a hassle? Do we try to get out of having family devotions or neglect them fully? Would we rather go to a ball game or sit back in our La-Z-Boy and watch our team over build our relationship with Christ?

Are we capable of reaching out and building relationships on our love for the Minnesota Vikings, but spur away from fellowship with the body of Christ? I think it’s great to be passionate about sports but that can’t be the biggest passions in our life, not even close. We need to be passionate about our families, our children, our church, and Jesus. If you believe that it’s easy to be passionate about sports because they’re more fun than Jesus than you haven’t experienced the insurmountable joy that comes from being fully accepted, forgiven, and heart set on fire for the King of the Universe who transcended down into our lands to live amongst us, teach us, and die for us. There is no greater joy than calling His name.

Loyalty

The last thing that we can learn and more so be challenged by through our fandom is our loyalty. We as fans endure through the good times and the hard times. There are times when supporting and claiming a team is tough and whether it’s through a bad season, a scandal, drug charges or player conduct we endure and hold onto the hope that it will fade. I think that that long lasting enduring loyalty is a pretty special and uncommon trait amongst people who now a days tend to look after themselves. However, we should be challenged in why we will endure things like bad seasons but often run when it comes to things that matter in life. Whether it’s running or keeping our distance from the church or marital problems.

There are husbands and wives who can stay loyal to their sports team their whole life, but when a problem occurs in their marriage whether it’s financial problems, personality conflicts, illness, infidelity, will decide that it’s not worth staying there. That’s a hard thing to witness and for children to grow up believe it was easier for his parents to love a sports team than their spouse, but that’s the world we live in. There is grace in that moment, but what would our lives look like, our marriages look like, our churches look like if we decided to be loyal and stick it out through and through with them with the same fire and passion that we show for our precious Red Sox, Crimson Tide, or Wolves. They would look eternally different.

Sports and Jesus

I have personally always loved sports and have learned more about myself from sports than anything I learned in my formal education, but sports can’t be our lives. We need to be passionate about building our families and our relationship with Christ. We need to be passionate about being a part of our own team, the body of Christ and play our role. We need to be committed to our families and our God and put them as top priorities in our lives. We can love sports but we can’t worship sports, that’s what Jesus is for.

Summer Bathtubs and Summer Oceans

“If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.” – Colossians 3:1-2

Summer is a wonderful time. Most students begin the countdown to when summer starts at approximately the exact same moment that they realized t’s over. Needless to say summer is very refreshing for all of us after a busy year (especially students). Summer gives us a chance for nice weather and being outside. It gives us the chance to lounge around just a little bit more. For students and children it’s all about staying up late, sleeping in later, and doing nothing they don’t want to do for three whole months. It relaxes and calms us in a way that only time away from our busy schedules does. However, this momentary breath of fresh air is only that, a moment.

Summer is a bathtub of grace, joy and peace. We have the ability to soak in it for a while and it feels great! We look forward to it, it relaxes us and takes our mind off our problems and allows us to escape ourselves. Unfortunately, after a while the hot water turns lukewarm and suddenly it’s not as relaxing. It’s not as fun. It’s not our escape. If you fight through that period of lukewarmness and try to continue to live in that moment, eventually the water will become cold and suddenly you realize you are lying in your own filth. Our paradise at first has slowly transformed into a prison. That’s because bathtubs aren’t meant to be lived in. They’re not suppose to be our main source of joy and our well for hope.

Summer allows us freedom and fun, but if we prioritize summer above God and use that freedom to self-indulge in ourselves we will never be truly refreshed. If we fall into the logic that summer is our well for hope and joy we will let summer consume us more and more and God less and less. We’ll start to get skimpy with our prayer life and neglect the Word of God and think it’s for our benefit after all what’s more refreshing reading the Bible or laying poolside? However, we will soon start to pay for our negligence to Christ through: shallowness, powerlessness, vulnerability to sin, preoccupation with trifles, superficial relationships, and a frightening loss of interest in worship and the things of the Spirit. Summer is a foretaste of heaven, but it will never and could never be a substitute for heaven.

Summer is a bathtub. Jesus is an ocean.  Jesus is an ocean of grace, joy, and peace that never runs dry and always overflows. He is at the center of all things, created all things, and sustains all things. It is He who calls out to us “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” It is Him who can give us true rest and remove our burdens. It is Christ who faithfully and sacrificially laid His life down as a blameless, pure, and holy being through death by crucifixion so that we could freely accept the only grace and love that fills us. He is our ocean.

As we live in the moments of summer seeking refuge from the craziness that surrounds us, it’s vital to remember summer isn’t the freedom, it is Christ. Prioritizing time for Christ throughout summer will allow us true rest because we are using a glimpse of heaven with the power and love of giving Christ everything that takes us away from Him. Therefore if we look at the words of Colossians we can see the power of that mindset in summer. The mindset of remembering our prioritizes and not falling into the idolatry that summer is our hope and joy, because that will only lead to disappointment and emptiness. Putting our hope, anxieties, and faith in Christ and dwelling with Christ and seeking Christ is where we will find rest. We won’t find true rest by concentrating on the things of this world ever. It’s a valuable lesson we need to teach our children so they don’t fall in the empty patterns of the rest of the world. Because one thing is for sure, while we cannot live in the summer, we can live in Jesus.

Fruit of the Spirit: Joy

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” – Galatians 5:22-23a

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The second Fruit of the Spirit is joy. There are many things that bring us joy aren’t there? Things that range from our families and hobbies to sitting in our new car; we can all find joy in these things from from time-to-time. Maybe there’s a little disconnect though because aren’t those things what brings us happiness? Are joy and happiness the same thing? Is one better than another or more important than the other? How do we know which is which?

The Difference

In my eyes there is a distinct difference when I think about what makes me happy and what makes me joyful. Happiness in my eyes is a fleeting emotion. Many things bring us happiness while we are on earth, but all those things that bring us happiness will fade in time.

Joy on the other hand is a more eternal emotion. Joy is being truly satisfied and content with where you are regardless of your circumstances. Joy is being filled with Christ and knowing His love is enough to complete you and bring you comfort and delight no matter how your day.

Joy in the Lord is saying His love in our darkest days still outshines the happiness we get from the world in our greatest days. Not only does it outshine, but it’s not even close, it’s a no contest. Joy fulfills us while happiness is here today and gone tomorrow leaving us still searching for what will fill the whole in our heart.

New Life of Desire

If we truly believe in Christ it changes our worlds and gives us new life. How we live and what we desire changes and shapes us towards Christ and away from the world. This changes our relationships and every interaction we have after and our family is no exception, the whole dynamic takes a new form. The emphasis you put on your family changes because you want them to true authentic joy and not just happiness and your eyes have been open to put the emphasis on that as well. Here’s some ways that we can practice showing joy in our families.

1. Sports are about more than winning, sports are about growing. The amount of time I’ve seen parents or other fans losing perspective of the game is almost every time I’m watching. You see them in high school gym cursing at teenagers who travel or miss a tackle. You see them telling their child that they’ll have to tell the parent who missed that they’re a loser. Our joy isn’t in the achievement it’s in the child. It’s imperative that we understand that so that we can encourage and support our child and shepherd them. Sports are great, but they are just sports.

2. On our hardest days praise God. Our children are watching us and following us and we need to always remember that. We are the greatest influencers in their lives. If life 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react then we need to making the most of how we react and respond to life. As we begin to praise God and thank God on the hardest days whether through a loss of a job, divorce, sickness, financial distress, we are putting a foundation of joy and gratitude into our children’s lives as well.

3. Smile. It’s a pretty simple one isn’t it? Smile. What other way can we show this joy that overwhelms and gets us through every day. We are handcrafted by the God of the Universe, who died for us to free us from our sins so that we can one day live in paradise with Him. His walks besides us to guide us, in from of us to protect and comfort us and behind us. The joy we receive from Him is more than enough to smile and say “My God is a mighty God.”

Whenever you’re feeling low look towards God’s love to get you through the day and not just to survive but to thrive. The joy you receive will encourage others to know Him as well. You are a beacon of light so be joyful in the love you have!

Our Perspective in Struggle

Overview of Video

In this video, Gretchen Norlund, talks about her doubts of God while struggling with Cystic Fibrosis. How could God love her and create her so beautifully and delight in her while giving her this disease that she would have to battle her entire life and control so much of what she could and couldn’t do? How come God hasn’t healed her of this disease? Is her faith too small? Is her sin too big? Doubt and skeptic moods creep on sparingly and Gretchen has to decide what to do (or believe) next.

Gretchen enlightens us by reminding us that our ability to trust God isn’t based on what He gives us rather on His love. She also phrases so beautifully a comparison to our dictating circumstances and love for God with those hard times with Job. What if our circumstances are a testament of our love of God?

In Job, a man who follows and delights in God is tested. Satan tells God it’s easy to love and be faithful when life is good, so God hands Job to Satan to show Satan that Job’s faith and love isn’t depicted on his life or the blessings he receives. Gretchen highlights what that interaction could have looked like in her own life in a way that challenges the audience in their own perspective with their life.

Reason for Choosing

Gretchen’s faith and joy for life was instrumental in my walk with Christ and as I watched this video my perspective of how to view my struggles was changed from this is standing in the way of Christ in my life to this is how I show Satan that Jesus is my rock.

Gretchen lived her whole life with Cystic Fibrosis and never let it concur her. She was a worship artist and musician despite having a disease that attacked her lungs, she sung so beautifully and glorified God all the more just as she tells about through out her life.

On April 10, 2015 Gretchen passed away from complications with her Cystic Fibrosis. I wanted to give all of you a glimpse of the Sister in Christ we lost, one that God formed and delighted in all the days of her life. She is now, singing songs without pain worshipping and lifting up the One who saved her in His presence.

Lesson

Life is hard. We face challenges every day of our lives whether through our illness, financial problems, health issues within our family, loss of job, or whatever it may be. I hope that you can come to think of these not as a punishment, but instead you can picture the exchange God and Satan had with Job in your own life.

“She wouldn’t love you if she didn’t have everything. Fire her from her job then they’ll lose faith. Let that child’s life be rocked by a divorce then he’ll turn away from you. Give their child a disease and see if they still worship you, I bet they won’t, I bet they turn from you.” – Satan

“Try them. I believe their faith and love will still shine.” – God