One of the things I love about my dear friend Jason Otter’s
training in basketball (which is the best on
the planet, by the way) is his attention to efficiency of movement… he
teaches players to not waste motion and to get the job done! That is not what this
week’s devotion is about, but it is why I am writing it the way I am; it is my attempt
to work smarter… not harder. It is me not wasting time to rehash what I have
already said. It is me trying to be efficient…
On most weekdays our school schedule allows for a short time for
the students and staff to have a devotion that typically I write. Today was no
exception, and it was one that had some good thoughts from the athletic perspective.
Right before I share the devotion from today, let me give “The
Parable of the Meme Coach”
Once upon a time a coach called a timeout because his team was
facing a full court press. In the huddle the coach shared many catchy phrases
to let the team know how talented they are; he told them that they were ‘press-breakers’
and that would be a ‘back-breaker’ to the other team; he truly fired up the
team…
The team went back on the floor with a renewed confidence in
themselves and their abilities; they took the ball out and immediately turned
it over again against the pressure… and the next time they took it out they
turned it over again… and so on… (to be continued)
From my Statesville
Christian devo
“Perspective:
Yesterday I sat through a church service that was exciting and fired everyone
up; that place was rocking! The music was sensational, and the message was
motivational… yet something didn’t sit right with me…
The preacher made a lot
of great remarks… a lot of them… in fact if one was taking notes there would be
a great deal of material to create some memes… that is what didn’t sit right
with me… and my wife pointed it out by calling it a ‘great meme message.’
So what is a meme?
According to one site I found it is ‘an idea, like a gene, that can replicate
and evolve. A unit of cultural information that represents a basic idea that
can be transferred from one individual to another, and subjected to mutation,
crossover, and adaptation…’
This modern
meme-culture was eating up that message yesterday… the preacher was speaking
the language of the day! But I think we need to be very cautious here…
Motivation - Preparation = Humiliation! In other words, we can go in talking a
big game and fully convinced we can compete, but if the work hasn’t been done,
we are simply going to be loud losers. No matter how excited you are… how
motivated you are… how passionate you are… there must be discipline,
commitment, work ethic to back all of that up. Preparation is the fuel of
passion!
Application: Someone that truly desires to grow and
succeed, will put in the time of preparation. And this is true spiritually as
well… check out this verse in 2
Timothy chapter 2…
15
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to
be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
A diligent worker! This is someone that puts in time of
preparation! Someone that is not just listening to the “memes” of this world…
in fact check out the verse right before (14 Remind them of these things, charging them before the Lord
not to strive about words to no profit, to the ruin of the hearers); and then the verse after (16) has
something to say about shallow motivation… it tells us to avoid idle babblings… in other words, avoid words that are
easily spoken without diligent work going on… words are cheap, easy to say!
Today spend a few
minutes looking at your schedule… do you have time set aside for the things
that matter? Is there time to talk with God? Is there time to hear from God? Is
God truly a priority in your life? That is evidenced by the work you put in,
not by the memes you spit out…”
Back to our Parable of the Meme Coach; he was great at
getting the team fired up, but he didn’t take time in his huddle to diagram a
press-breaker… he didn’t equip the team for success.
If you are in the role of a teacher/preacher in life,
make sure you are equipping, not just motivating. For all of us, make sure we
are sitting under some equipping teaching in our lives… so we are not facing
the world just with the excitement of motivation, but with the confidence of
preparation!
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