Go Saints! Setting the stage…for life…and winning

3. November 2009 by BruceSmith.

Go Saints!  Setting the Stage …for Life …and Winning

Last night we Saints fans watched our team hit the 7-0 mark with a win over the “Dirty Birds” from Atlanta.  For the first time in our team’s history it appears we actually have a Super Bowl contender!  How cool is that?  Very cool.  But how has this happened?  Have the statistics just finally maxed out on our badness?  Are we just experiencing a statistical anomaly?  In a football world so vast, was this just bound to happen, by chance, at some point?  If you know anything about football, or coaching, or talent, or competition, or leadership, or team building, … you know there is more to it than chance.  The stage has been set for success in New Orleans, and how.

Setting the stage for success in the ranks of the National Football League is more than a bit complicated.  Champions in that competitive world are built through precise execution, study of tape, team chemistry, coach/player trust, management of emotion, making the most of momentum, rabid adherence to the playbook, love for the fight, appreciation for the game, poise amidst pressure, and a pure passion for playing at a high level…all of this, every play, and actually between every play, and between every game, remaining the focus of a gifted community of competitors.  Its a lot like life, as it turns out.

Imagine, if you can, this same 7-0 team, wandering through the week, paying little if any attention to the play book, practicing only when its convenient, the players never talking or spending time together, eating poorly, listening to what everyone has to say about football strategy, conditioning little, each one pursuing only their own ideas for a game plan, watching music videos rather than game tape, and only practicing the plays each one likes to be a part of.  Chances are pretty high that this same group of athletes would  be a bit off of that 7-0 record.  

Imagine with me also, a cast of thesbians, award winning stage actors, who have taken broadway by storm, and have become “The show to see” in New York City.  After months of precise training, conditioning, rehearsal, and mastery of the lines and choreography, and after wowing fans from all over the world, they show up for the closing night amidst a sea of media coverage and fanfare, and get ready to take the stage.  Only one problem though, someone has set the stage for an entirely different performance!  Envision, if you can, the cast of Fiddler on the Roof, taking the stage and finding it set for River Dance!  Not sure that would work.

The analogies above, like any analogy or metaphor, will break down at some point if taken too far, but the images work on many levels for us as Christ-followers, saints,  called to be champions, and performers in the game of life.  If, like the 7-0 football Saints, we the saints of God (saints being the word for “christians” in the bible) have any hope of performing on a high level, we will need to take a similar road to get there.  Christians, saints, can only hope to live the kind of life God calls us to if we are rabidly committed to being in His playbook, following His coaching, studying His strategy ideas, and remaining utterly focused and attune to His calls every step of the way.  We cannot just show up on Sunday, have a great spiritual party or pep-rally, and expect that to be enough.  If the Saints showed up on Sunday after a week of sporadic practice, having never looked at the game tape or play book, it would be ugly, very very ugly.  The same is true of our life.  We christians, if pursuing this kind of “strategy” would wind up looking like the New Orleans Saints of old who were know the world over for having fans who put paper bags over there heads while in the stands.  

But this kind of thing happens, sadly, all too often in the lives of God’s people.  Somehow, if the statistical analysis is accurate, it appears that God’s people have largely forgotten that the playbook is supposed to be followed.  Studies show that rates of divorce within the church match those in the culture at large, commitment to key fundamental biblical doctrines (like the divinity of Christ, sin, absolute truth, and others) remains far lower than expected, lifestyle realities look all too similar to that of the culture at large, child-rearing strategies too closely resemble that of the general culture, similar views on sexuality and marriage remain, and entertainment pursuits/tastes are all too close to those of the society at large.  

Yet, if you talked to the average christian person in many local churches, especially on Sunday, one would get the idea that all was well.  What are we missing?  How have we somehow lost the ability to connect the dots of God’s play book with those dots which represent the realities of our daily life?  How is it that we can view, listen to, talk about, enjoy, and believe such much of the blatantly non-christian propaganda offered to us by a world so far removed from God’s field of play?  How is it that we are so ready to rationalize, dismiss, and otherwise ignore God’s plays for us which set us up for victory?

If we are to have the quality of life offered to us in the scriptures, it will only come as we understand the pristine and life-giving quality of God’s call for us.  When the coach sends a play in from the sideline, the team only succeeds when they understand the coaching/player roles, and apply the call to real time, real competition.  God, we can trust, never sends in a call which is amiss.  He gets it right every time.  We need only execute.  There is no confidence greater in all of life.  To know that the Man making the calls for us ALWAYS gives us the call which is for our success is a huge gift.  He knows every play, has seen every opposition and defensive scheme, and has a game plan which has been tested and has never failed.  Why would anyone try to go it alone?  What were we thinking?!  I ask myself very thing all this too often.

The call for us, if we want our lives to resemble an award winning production, a championship season, is to take to heart all that God has offered us in His word.  He has given us the perfect stage preparation for a life of grace, peace, joy, fulfillment, and hope.  The reason our lives so often fail to live up to our aspirations in love, finance, emotions, friendship, career, and other areas is that we go off stage so often.  We attempt to find our way to the award podium, in hopes of receiving our Tony Award, never paying any mind to the fact that we have actually memorized the lines to the wrong play, and have danced to the wrong choreography.  We seem to want the Super Bowl trophy, but ignore the road map to the trophy presentation.  With our emotions, our responses to difficulty, our choices in love, our management of households, our guidance for our kids, our failed application of biblical teaching, …we have gone off script and fallen upon props which were never destined to be in our performance.  We have wanted a big night come performance time, but we have neglected our preparation through a life of daily reading, worship, spiritual focus, and devotion.  We ignore Him till it matters to us, and then we expect it all to go so well.  But this does not work on Broadway, nor on the field on Sunday, and it does not work in life.  God is bigger than that, and He won’t allow it.  He wants not just to be our first, but our all, and in all.

There is a way to victory.  There is a bigger life.  There is a way forward to a fuller and more vibrant daily experience.  It begins and thrives only as we give our all in every moment to Him.  Our emotions find a center in His plan.  Our kids find direction in His playbook.  Our entertainment enriches us, and our kids, as we embrace and entertain ourselves with things which God would find joy in.  Our mind and souls find growth and enrichment as we prepare them through study and education which points us to Him.  Christ in all, all the time.  He is all we need, despite the cries of a culture which believes that fun will replace joy, entertainment will replace soul enrichment, mindless downtime will replace a hunger for a deeper knowledge of Him, and pleasure will replace true contentment.  It will never happen.  Until and unless we turn our lives over to Him completely, wholly, and without reservation, we shall not find that victory offered to us in Him.  It must be His plan entirely.  We must be fully open to His playbook and each play call.  We must place ourselves squarely in the center of His stage.

Is His life the one we fight for, long for, hunger for?  May God make it so for each of us.  Do we truly want a life bigger than the one we now have?  Are we arrogant or deceived enough to think we have all we need as we follow our own calls?  Is victory out there?  It is indeed.  Let’s head in that direction.  It won’t happen by chance.  Let’s get intentional, focused, impassioned, and courageous.  Let’s get after it.  We got this!  Go saints!!

Bruce Smith

optimuslife.org

soulstormsite.com

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