July 5, 2021 - Playing With A Sense Of Urgency

This week’s “game plan” involves more complexity than the usual offering… it is one of challenge… one of conviction (and confession)… one of concern/desperation… More of that in just a bit…

As I sat taking some notes over the past few days for some upcoming speaking engagements, it has been done with also thinking through our ministry. And it brought me to thinking about “why teams do a full-court press”?

The most common reason teams put on a press, is that it is late in the game, and they are behind on the scoreboard; this allows them to try to get the other team to make careless plays and turn the ball over… Some teams will sporadically put on a press (maybe full-court… or ¾Court… or half-court) to simply change the rhythm of the game for the other team, again trying to get some turnovers… And some teams simply play pressure-basketball, always trying to speed up the other team… to wear them down… to turn them over… Why do turnovers matter, it gives an opportunity to go on offense and SCORE!

Just so you know, I am a coach that believes in “playing to the :00s”… I don’t like backing off on defense because we are behind, and the game is out of hand. I think it is important to play every minute… every second… we committed to play games, not just win games… BUT admittedly I don’t know that I have always played/coached with urgency. (Although one of my favorite years coaching was a group of 5^th/6^th grade girls that we nicknamed the “Greedy Girls”, because we trained them to WANT THE BASKETBALL! They were so much fun to coach/watch…)

So now I am going to try to fit in all the stuff I mentioned in the opening, without turning this devo into a rambling sermon… This topic came to mind as I was evaluating some things for our ministry to make a presentation to our board. Coming out of the pandemic waters, we have found ourselves in a hole financially, “behind on the scoreboard.” As I looked at options of what to do, one thing would be to simply “back off and let the clock run out”; or we can “press” and try to make some things happen. (Told you there would be some concern and desperation.) This all hit right as we entered the month of July, which is insanely busy (and typically is each year) with ministry opportunities. (i.e., Just today I was able to share the message of The Substitute with around 40 kids!)

Again, the month of July is typically very busy for us, but this year I had made a decision to dig in and go hard for the month, and my confession… that I was probably motivated more by needing to raise revenue than opportunity to minister; which is a bit of a catch-22 since we need to raise revenue in order to minister… so it is a matter not of what we are doing but why…

Then as I have been studying, I was brought back to a very familiar passage… John 4:35B… “Behold, I say to you (Jesus speaking), lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest!”

So, what was Jesus saying there to the disciples? When a field is “white for harvest,” it is already ripe… needing to be harvested NOW or else it will go to ruin. In fact, one article I read said it this way: “It’s best to go ahead and harvest on the early side since if you wait too long, the heads (of the wheat) will ‘shatter’, meaning that the grains will fall onto the ground.”

Jesus was stating that we need to “put on the full-court press” and realize time is running out for some.

I challenge you to “play” with a sense of urgency!

I challenge you to not determine the urgency based upon being in the black or red (financial motivation), but being in the white (spiritual motivation.)

Sure I am hoping that this busy month helps our organization regain some traction financially, BUT even if our “doors had to close” I will stay motivated to share the harvesting-truth of the Gospel! Will you join me?