February 7, 2016 the Game of Your Life 1 Corinthians 9.24-27
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February 7, 2016 The Game of Your Life 1 Corinthians 9.24-27 Douglas Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church Today is one of the biggest annual celebrations in the United States. It’s Super Bowl Sunday, a day of football, money, excess, food and more. Businesses will spend millions of dollars for 60 second commercials. On television and radio, in print and online thousands upon thousands of hours have been spent in producing stories and finding every possible angle from the sublime to the ridiculous about some aspect of the game, the teams, the players, the coaches, and the fans. Billions of dollars will be bet not just on the outcome of the game but on more things than you can imagine including things like who will win the opening coin toss, whether the first missed field goal goes left or right, or if the number of the last person to score is odd or even. While the Super Bowl is big business unless one is coaching or playing in it, it’s also just a game; a game which should be a diversion from the stress and work of every day life. It’s not our life. You all know I like sports and images of sports and athletes are present in the Bible including these words from 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, “Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.” On Super Bowl Sunday whether we’re sports fans or not, we can’t escape the game, but I want to talk with you about a game that’s even more important and that’s the game of your life, which is, in many ways, a lot like a football game. One way life is like a football game is that there’s a clock, our time is limited. We only get so many years and we only get one life so we need to make the most of the days we have to live. That’s what we heard in Psalm 90:10 &12, “The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.” None of us knows how long we’ll live, but if we’re healthy, strong, and fortunate, Psalm 90 says we can hope for 80 years. If so, you can easily figure what quarter of your life you’re in. If our life span is 80 years: 1-20 years old is the first quarter, 21-40 second quarter, 41-60 Third quarter, 61-80 Fourth quarter, 81 or older we’re in Overtime or Bonus Time. However, as we all know, life holds no guarantees for how long we may live so we need to seize our opportunity at life and make the most of it. Psalm 90 says, “So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.” We’re never too young or too old to be thinking about what God wants us to do with our life. And God is an important part of the equation, it’s not just what do I want to do, but what does God want me to do with my life. What strengths, talents, abilities, and skills have I been given? What am I passionate about? What can I do to leave the world better than I found it for future generations? How can I be a blessing to other people? The sooner we learn that a significant life invested answering these questions is better and more satisfying than a life chasing after our own comfort the more content we’ll be. A football team knows it will only possess the ball so many times in a game so it’s important to make the most of those offensive opportunities. The path to a significant life also includes a wise heart that understands the importance of time. Winning the game of our life requires faith and determination in pursuing our dreams and goals when some people may tell us “You’re not good enough to do that.” Those of us who are older – who are parents and grandparents, have a special role to play in encouraging our children and grandchildren to pursue the dreams God gives them. One of the most valuable players on the Patriots is wide receiver Julian Edelman. The Patriot’s season was changed significantly for the worse when he was injured on November 15. Julian had a remarkably hard the journey to becoming an NFL star. He was always small for his age, but when he was eleven-years-old, he led his Pop Warner team to a national championship, later he quarterbacked his high school team to an undefeated season. However, because he was so small no college recruited him or offered him a scholarship so he played at a local junior college where he again had great success, but only one school offered him an opportunity and that was Kent State, in Ohio, not exactly a football powerhouse. When he arrived at Kent State in May of 2006 his coaches were not expecting him to be ready to start by the beginning of the season. When he saw the 6’ 6” starting quarterback kicking some punts on the field, Edelman told him to get used to it because that’s what he was going to be doing from now on. Julian learned the whole playbook and won the starting quarterback job. He had great success at Kent State, but knew he wouldn’t be taken seriously as a potential NFL quarterback, so he started returning punts. When he was drafted in the seventh and final round by the Patriots, the team didn’t know how they’d use him. All Edelman did was keep working hard, shutting out the critics, and doing everything within his control to make himself better. He has succeeded beyond anyone’s dreams from being a last round pick in 2009 to becoming one of the most valuable players on a Super Bowl Champion team. To win the game of life requires an awareness and urgency about the time we have. It demands faith and determination in pursuing our dreams and goals. Another key to winning the game of life is to keep learning from our mistakes and making adjustments. For coaches and players, halftime is a brief period of rest, reflection, analysis, and adjustments that are made to correct mistakes. To win the game of our life we need to learn from our mistakes and make adjustments. Patriots Coach Bill Belichick is a good example of this. So much of who and what Belichick is today as head coach of the New England Patriots can be traced to who and what he was as head coach of the mostly unsuccessful Browns. There are such stark differences between the two tenures, and yet Belichick remains essentially the same person, just not entirely the same coach. "The Browns were his training camp, his boot camp for success,'' said Mary Kay Cabot, the beat reporter who covered Belichick and the Browns for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “There were mistakes he made here on players, personnel, staff, public relations. But he's the master of adjustments. He learned how to do it right by everything he did wrong here.'' When the Browns fired Belichick, the decision was hailed as necessary and inevitable. An Akron columnist wrote, "Bill Belichick's five-year reign of error is over.'' In 2000, a new reign began with the Patriots. Since then the errors have been much fewer. While serving as New England's coach, Belichick's Patriots have won four Super Bowls, and almost won two more. One can argue that Belichick might be the greatest NFL coach of all time. In Cleveland, he was 37-45 with one playoff win (over the Patriots). In New England, he is 187-69 for an amazing .730 winning percentage and his team is 22-9 in the playoffs. "We all learn from our mistakes,'' said Ernie Accorsi, the former Browns executive VP for football operations who hired the 38-year- old Belichick as head coach in 1991. Belichick can coach. But he coaches better since he left Cleveland. He coaches better because he got fired and had to adjust.1 One of the mistaken assumptions some folks have is that people who rise to the top of their profession never fail or make mistakes. Far from it; what is more correlated to being successful and significant is learning from our mistakes and making appropriate adjustments. To win the game of life – requires making the most of the time we’re given; having faith, working hard, and persevering through “no’s” and obstacles, like Julian Edelman; it means learning from our failures and mistakes and making adjustments like Bill Belichick. Winning the game of life also means discovering our purpose in life so we can fulfill it. God is the creator and giver of our life and God has a calling, a mission, a destiny for each of us to pursue.