Victory ahead

Feeling discouragement beyond anything I’d ever experienced, I couldn’t find the motivation to move beyond the setbacks and disappointments of life – until one day my husband looked sincerely into my eyes and tentatively offered, “It takes no effort at all to lose a football game.”

And then he flinched because he figured I wouldn’t appreciate his sports analogy.

We don’t always speak the same language.

But I didn’t bop him upside the head or even roll my eyes at him. He wasn’t quoting Scripture or telling me, “God doesn’t want you to give up!” but surely God gave him just the right thing to say, because that short and simple statement reached me and helped me get back up and resume the battle that is sometimes life.

With a husband and three sons who are all football fanatics, I’ve watched enough games over the years to genuinely wonder how guys can go out there, get beaten up and utterly exhausted, and keep on playing hard for the entire game even when they’re behind on the scoreboard. What can I learn from these dedicated athletes?

Athletes must have a broader vision, a higher goal, than merely the game at hand. Every battle on the football field is an opportunity to learn and to improve for future games.

We can look only at our current situation and decide it’s too hard, it’s hopeless; or we can look at the bigger picture and say, like Paul, “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14).

Athletes recognize that they do not play for themselves alone. They are accountable to others and won’t give up for love of their teammates.

We’re not alone in this game of life. Sometime other people need us, and sometimes we need them; but if we give up, we’re no good to anyone.

My husband’s football analogy was especially apt. The qualities required to persevere on the gridiron are the same qualities needed elsewhere in life: farsightedness, accountability, perseverance and love.

As Christians, we will face setbacks and disappointments in life, but it’s so important to leave them behind and “... run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith …" (Hebrews 12: 1–2).