Growth

All or Nothing

All of us are probably familiar with tales of athletes who didn’t leave it all out on the field. Just this past weekend, Vince Young of the Tennessee Titans was criticized by his coach, Jeff Fisher, because he didn’t “dig deep and fight” after a disappointing injury and season collapse.  But Young is only the latest in a string of superstar athletes who appear to hold something back  – who are seemingly unwilling to give it all in order to win the game.

We often behave similarly as Christians. We keep parts of our lives for ourselves, telling God that He can have everything except that one thing that we treasure most. It’s the common occurrence of someone saying “God, I will go anywhere you want me to go, as long as it’s not a missionary in Africa.” (BTW – I have a friend who is a missionary in Africa who gets to be a part of amazing work that God is doing so we all might want to reconsider that reservation.) We know we’re supposed to give God everything, just like the athlete knows they are supposed to play full force until the whistle is blown, but we don’t, because we’re afraid of how that might cost us personally.

However, what I’ve learned is that if we aren’t willing to give Christ our all, we really aren’t willing to give Christ anything. When I wrote recently about some painful circumstances, a friend asked me why I shared them with the world when I hadn’t even told close friends. It was because I realized that if I wasn’t willing to let God use those things to minister to others, than I really wasn’t willing to give Him everything. If we only give that which is easy for us, than we haven’t learn what it means to take up our cross to follow Him. And being a Christian means following Him. Everything must be on the line. Our pain, our joys, our family, our friends – we must be willing to give Christ it all so that He may use it for His glory.

Vince Young was criticized by his coach because he held back and when things didn’t go his way, he was not willing to sacrifice his ego for the team. When our Coach talks about us, may He not say the same.

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Growth

Character Centered


Warren Wiersbe once stated that the difference between Saul and David was that Saul was concerned about reputation, while David was concerned about character (qtd. by Ronnie Stevens). It’s a point easily validated by the Scriptures. After all, Saul was the people’s king, the one that was chosen based on their perceptions of what royalty should be. Therefore he had to be focused on maintaining that reputation. David, however, was the man after God’s own heart (see I Samuel 13:14 and Acts 13:22). David’s concern then was not about maintaining man’s perception of him, but God’s.

Maintaining this distinction is not easily done in our own lives. After all, we are more often aware of our reputation then God’s perception of our character. We hear whispers in the hall, see a comment on Facebook, or receive an unsolicited piece of feedback and our reputation is quickly revealed. Character, however, is something that’s easier to mask, and therefore we often sacrifice it in order to maintain our reputation. After all, if our heart is not in the right place who’s going to know but us?

The truth is we know that there is One who does know when are heart is askew. We also know that sooner or later our reputation will be affected by our character. After all, “out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45) and “a man’s heart reflects the man” (Proverbs 27:19). If our character is not right, sooner or later we will mess up our reputation.

The challenge then is to put our focus on where it should rightly be – not on maintaining our reputation but on maintaining our character. As David’s life can attest this commitment to character will not be without its challenges, or failures, but in the end, a life focused on maintaining a heart after God’s own, will earn the rewards that reputation alone can never achieve, rewards that last long after our reputation fades away.

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