September 27, 2021 - What gets your attention?

“What gets our attention gets our affection.” Matt Brooks, LifePoint Church 

That phrase was shared yesterday during a sermon, and I immediately thought of how it relates to basketball… (I know that is strange but after close to 20 years of doing these weekly devotions, my mind seems to always go to athletic analogies…) It was a reminder that we can see someone’s motivation based upon where their attention is directed.

I actually had many stories from the past pop to mind, too many to actually share… but I will give a good example of the thoughts that were triggered… I thought of guys that I played ball with in the past, that obviously were more attentive to their individual success and stat lines than the team’s success; and the team’s success was only a way to bolster their individual reputations. These were guys that were truly ok with the team losing as long as they looked good. These were guys that rushed to the scorebook following games to confirm that their stats matched what they were keeping up with in their heads. (It is not surprising if a guy that is not a big scorer is aware that he only scored one or two buckets in a game, but a bit unsettling when a volume scorer has kept up with making 10 or 15 shots…)

These were guys that forgot “there is no ‘I’ in team”… and love the joke but ‘there is an ‘I’ in “win”!

Don’t get me wrong, we need high-volume scorers… we need individuals to do their jobs (what they are good at)… so the “I” doing his job does matter… BUT the motivation is the issue…

Romans 12 tells us to play our individual role on the team… it begins a long section of Romans that tells how to do that. Verses 3-8 remind us that we each have unique abilities and positions on the team. Then verse 9 begins with: “Let love be without hypocrisy...”

I talked to my dear friend Grant Hawley, who is my go-to guy for handling the original languages of Scripture, and he explained that the phrase is really just 2 words in the Greek… something along the lines of Love Genuinely or Authentically… he went on to say that it is called a Pendant Nominative in the Greek language and serves as somewhat of a heading to the section to follow… which happens to go all of the way into chapter 15 telling us how to be genuine in our love… how we can be motivate by a team-first mentality instead of a me-first mentality. (What do I bring to the team… not what does the team bring to me.)

Obviously, my goal here is not just centered on sports teams… but on the church! And by that I do not mean just the Sunday morning gathering, but the life-team you belong to… what are you bringing to the team? How are you playing your position? Do you focus on loving others, or is there a hypocritical/selfish motivation to what you do?

Let’s focus on the team!!!