Monday, September 23, 2013

Football, an F; Basketball, a D; Baseball, a C - Life and Love, What is my grade?


    An "F "in Football:
 When I was a kid of 8 or 9, or so, I played little league football and was on the “red team”.  As I remember we were OK or maybe even good, because we had Garnet S ( I won’t use his name since I don’t have his permission), but Garnet S later played quarterback for two different college football teams.   

     I remember during one of the early games of our Little League season the coach telling me to go in as right tackle, after which I ran onto the field and promptly asked Garnet S, my friend, “Where does the right tackle go?”  I know, I know….I should have known these things  after all the practices we'd had...at least a few.  However, if at practice no one tells you the simple facts of football you still don’t know where the right tackle goes or what he does.  And if you are too shy or too afraid to ask "Coach" then you still don't know. 

     Garnet would tell me to block that guy or go after the guy with the ball…or something profound.  I knew Garnet would go far because he actually knew where the right tackle was supposed to line up and what he was to do when he got there.

After a while I got tired of not knowing and not playing much. Wonder why coach didn't play me much?  Never mind....  I know..  I stank!

Funny, but I just realized that the same thing happened in basketball.  Never thought of the connection until this moment….and I am 63 years old.

A "D" in Basketball:
When I played Little League basketball, Mr. C, the coach, played his best players almost all the time, and one of those guys was his son.  I was still around 9 or 10, maybe, so we weren’t playing for national championships or for money, unless Mr. C was betting on the games.  Doubt it.  I came to practice faithfully as I recall then sat on the bench most of the games.  Just before the last game or two of the season, I quit the team only to discover that Mr. C played the bench squad more than usual during those few remaining games. Why did the coach not play me?  I know....I stank!

Now I know I may not have been the best football or basketball player ever, but now that I know what I did in neighborhood ball games and later playing intermurals in college, I think I could have been a "better than average" player in both sports because I had some skill and I was fast.  What I needed was a coach who’d teach me the basics….you know like Vince Lombardi would say, "Gentlemen, this is a football,” and  - as I understand the stories - would make sure the guys knew the fundamentals. 

When you try to run trick plays or even basic plays with guys who don’t know where the right tackle is, you might be coaching a team that won’t go far or you may be coaching a team of guys who stay frustrated because they are not winning very often, unless you only play your “stars”…if you happen to be blessed with enough stars.  And if you are gifted with stars, as a coach, you may not be very interested in training more stars or perhaps you simply don’t know how.

Is that what has happened to marriage and family and church?
Perhaps the coaches (pastors or denominational leaders) are only interested in the “star Christians” who seem to have it all together.  But what about us mediocre-at-best guys who want to shine on God’s team but don’t know how?  What about the guys and gals who want great marriages and want to be superb, Bible-based parents but have never seen it done?  What about those who wanted to win the world for Christ, but felt like such failures at home, or work, or both that they concluded they had nothing to give because they weren’t succeeding in the two or three most important relationships in life – marriage, parenting, spiritual leadership.

And then there are those who had great businesses and looked great on the outside and were highly esteemed as successes but had no more of an idea how to love well at home than the schmucks who were just barely getting by financially.

But when you asked them, everyone was “fine, just fine”.  Liars!  Well, maybe that is too harsh.  Many weren’t lying; they just didn’t believe those asking, “How are you doing?” , really wanted an answer.  Perhaps they weren’t any better at relationships at church than they were at home. 

In my view, we take our home relationships and foist them onto the world around us.  So my home relationship style of leadership, caring, and conflict resolution get transferred to work, church, and outside groups.  We may even be better at relationships outside the home...for a while.   Even if we fake it outside the home, eventually it all catches up with us and the truth of our ineptness will be revealed.

You may feel I am being overly critical.  You are probably wrong.

I am not bitter but I am tired of watching families fail and churches do little-to-nothing about it….either on the preventative-side of helping them experience and build great relationships before marriage by way of friendships or on the equipping-side of things to give couples the skills via biblical principles and mentoring needed to live out the very things the preacher is telling them to do.  Most can’t do it because they have not seen it done….in their own homes of origin or in the families in the church currently.

Like football and basketball, I went into marriage with only a few skills and a heart full of “want to do it right”.  I wanted to have the best family and the greatest marriage ever!  I can remember bits and pieces of relationships I observed during my youth where they had something I wanted to have in my own marriage one day, but I don't remember many.  I also had little to no training about what love is, how you do it, how loved we are by our Father in heaven, and how to be free in Christ to give love away.

I know I am writing more than folks will read but that is OK.  This is more for me than for others anyway.  I seem to have to get this off my chest tonight. 

When you have a heart to win, and you have some skills, but no training –  no proper equipment – no encouragers – no effective coaching--- only a vision of being a Michael Jordan, then you have a recipe for a great Sports Illustrated cover story for the kid who actually overcame the obstacles or for a sad story of a guy who joins the statistics of the people we call losers. 

I am here to tell you that God is after those guys who may never be stars on anyone’s team but can be on His Star Lover/Leader Team.  He'll even let a few of the cover story guys on His team.  Of all the things He wants us to do best -the choices are narrowed to one.  One thing Jesus Himself said was THE most important thing ever…..loving God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength and loving you as I love myself.  Sound familiar?

Who coached you to love more and more, as Jesus loves?
Who modeled that kind of love for you?  ... to you?
Who gave you the relational tools and equipment, and taught you to use it and how to put it on properly?
Who loved you so much like Jesus that you caught it, even if you were not taught it?
Who took you by the hand and said "Gentleman or Lady, this is love.”, now let’s learn how to recognize love, develop it, overcome obstacles in the way of it, and how to maintain it?    In fact, let’s learn how to get better at it with each passing year.
Who taught you to apply love to your marriage?
Who taught you how to pass along a new legacy of love to your children and your children’s children or those children, not your own, that you are called to adopt, foster-parent, or serve as a representative of Christ?

If the answers to the above questions indicate that you have had to learn this yourself, then you and I have a gracious God to thank.  The Lord Jesus gave us His Holy Spirit to live in us and bring these qualities to light.  I am grateful, but there's another thing that needs to be said.

“If God wanted us to just come to faith and then learn the rest of the Christian life on our own, He’d never have given the Great Commission or the Great Commandment”.

OK, I am about done…..it is late

A "C" in Baseball:
When I played baseball it was a little different story.  I was pretty good with the glove and played a decent third base.  Now this may be a case of “the older I get the better I was”, but I will go ahead and admit that I stank at the plate lest I get too prideful talking about my skill as an infielder.

As I did get better on defense, I got progressively worse at the plate to the place where striking out, or flying out, or grounding out because the norm.  I would rather stay out in the field as a third baseman that come in on offense and go to bat.  For me it was that I “got to bat”.  No, I mean I had to do it not that it was exciting and I wanted to get to the plate.  I was scared to bat because I was pretty sure I would fail.  After coming close to having an eye put out when a sharply hit grounder skipped over my glove and into my eyeglasses, shattering the lens into my eye, something changed. Stitches and blood and pain led me to now be afraid of the ball at the plate and at third.  You guessed it, rather than keep on trying, I quit.

When no one in the stands really cares whether you play or not, when the coaches don’t really encourage you to stick with it and offer to spend a little more time helping you get over the fear, and when you have already failed at basketball and football, then baseball becomes the third strike, and “you’re out of there”!  I was.

Years later, in my mid-40's, when I felt like a failure at marriage and was trying to decide what to do, guess what I concluded?  I had no marriage coaches, no body in the stands who cared  and knew how to care about my marriage, no skilled mentor to identify the problem and help fix it, and no one that I knew who had a better  marriage than mine,  I began to think that I should just quit and drive away.  That’s right.  I almost came to the horrible conclusion to leave; and maybe everyone would be better off, if I just kept going and drove away. 

Did you hear that lie?  “Everyone might be better off if I just left and started over somewhere else.”
Truth is “no one would be better off”.  In our country the divorce rate combined with its" hell on earth impact" on so many children and adults alike proves the point.  God hates divorce; He said so in the book of Malachi.  He loves us – single, married, divorced, re-married, not re-married, with kids, without kids -in every demographic group you can list.  But He wants divorce to stop.  He wants marriages to reflect the love He established to illumine a dark world where love is cold.

What grade will we get in Life and Love?
People do want to be loved and to give love, and I fully believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ that saves us …the Jew first and then the Gentile….though not more true when fleshed out in a loving home ---is nonetheless more believable by those in a home where His love shines.  And those outside that home observing from more of a distance the love of God happening in your relationships wish to God that they had such a family, such a love, such hope, and such a Savior who would love them too.

My prayerful hope and desire is to see this country reap the blessings of the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord and to live loved and give love freely…beginning at home in the power of the Holy Spirit.  God’s great love - expressed clearly in the homes of leaders and followers alike - would lead the leaders to authenticity and relevance in relationships and ministry and would help the followers to realize that they, since they too have those who follow them, are, in fact, leaders with influence. 

Perhaps the issue is not how many people I lead but to what destination I am leading them.  Are we leading others to love as Jesus loves, to know His love for them personally and to know that God loves them as much as He loves His own Son. John 17:23

When we know how loved we truly are, the Holy Spirit takes advantage of that freedom to move us to freely give that love away…starting with our nearest neighbors…those of our own home, extending to the uttermost parts of the earth.