Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.
On Monday night, I made a Facebook post celebrating the Alabama Crimson Tide's win in that night's national championship game. A friend of mine who's an Ole Miss fan decided to tease me a little and asked me if it bothered me to know that there Alabama had lost to Ole Miss and that there was "someone better" out there. That made me think. It's what inspired this post.
There has been a lot of talk about the fact that this is Alabama's fourth national championship in seven years. That's obviously a big accomplishment, but did you know that only one of those four teams (the 2009 team) went undefeated? As already mentioned, the 2015 team lost to Ole Miss. The 2012 team lost to Texas A&M, and the 2011 team lost to LSU. Fans of those teams made a lot of comments about beating the national championships, some in jest, some not, but in the end, none of those comments change anything. You see, it's not the small picture of the single game that matters; it's the big picture of the full season.
Interestingly enough, the 2011 Alabama team famously rematched with the LSU team that beat them in the regular season in the national title game. When all was said and done, they left no doubt about that game, winning 21-0 with the most outstanding defensive performance I've ever seen on any level. Instead of packing it in because their opponents had already taken them down once, the Crimson Tide played with determination, ready to prove that they were champions.
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that this is the perfect analogy for the Christian life. No one outside of the Lord Jesus Christ has ever won every battle of life. He, and he alone, can claim the perfection of an undefeated life. Friend, you and I are imperfect. We've all lost games, so to speak. I'm not trying to excuse sin, but it's a fact that as long as we're in the flesh, we're going to continue to do so. The important thing then, is how we respond to those failures. Do we allow them to define us, or do we get back up and continue to battle? Sometimes, we'll even have to fight the same battle more than once. When we do, do we allow our previous failures to doom us to failure a second time?
We all want to be champions, but if we give up after a defeat, it will never happen. I don't think I'll ever forget a quote from a high school football coach this past season after his team battled through a difficult second half to manage a comeback win in a south state championship game: "Never underestimate the heart of a champion!" The heart of a champion of faith is one that will stand fast in the faith and be strong. A champion is one who learns from his mistakes and allows them to draw him closer to the Lord. A champion is the one who never quits.
Yes, three of those Alabama teams lost a game, but that doesn't change the fact that they're champions. Their commitment to excellence and their willingness to fight on after those losses defined them far more than the losses did. Can the same be said of you?
1 Corinthians 16:13
On Monday night, I made a Facebook post celebrating the Alabama Crimson Tide's win in that night's national championship game. A friend of mine who's an Ole Miss fan decided to tease me a little and asked me if it bothered me to know that there Alabama had lost to Ole Miss and that there was "someone better" out there. That made me think. It's what inspired this post.
There has been a lot of talk about the fact that this is Alabama's fourth national championship in seven years. That's obviously a big accomplishment, but did you know that only one of those four teams (the 2009 team) went undefeated? As already mentioned, the 2015 team lost to Ole Miss. The 2012 team lost to Texas A&M, and the 2011 team lost to LSU. Fans of those teams made a lot of comments about beating the national championships, some in jest, some not, but in the end, none of those comments change anything. You see, it's not the small picture of the single game that matters; it's the big picture of the full season.
Interestingly enough, the 2011 Alabama team famously rematched with the LSU team that beat them in the regular season in the national title game. When all was said and done, they left no doubt about that game, winning 21-0 with the most outstanding defensive performance I've ever seen on any level. Instead of packing it in because their opponents had already taken them down once, the Crimson Tide played with determination, ready to prove that they were champions.
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that this is the perfect analogy for the Christian life. No one outside of the Lord Jesus Christ has ever won every battle of life. He, and he alone, can claim the perfection of an undefeated life. Friend, you and I are imperfect. We've all lost games, so to speak. I'm not trying to excuse sin, but it's a fact that as long as we're in the flesh, we're going to continue to do so. The important thing then, is how we respond to those failures. Do we allow them to define us, or do we get back up and continue to battle? Sometimes, we'll even have to fight the same battle more than once. When we do, do we allow our previous failures to doom us to failure a second time?
We all want to be champions, but if we give up after a defeat, it will never happen. I don't think I'll ever forget a quote from a high school football coach this past season after his team battled through a difficult second half to manage a comeback win in a south state championship game: "Never underestimate the heart of a champion!" The heart of a champion of faith is one that will stand fast in the faith and be strong. A champion is one who learns from his mistakes and allows them to draw him closer to the Lord. A champion is the one who never quits.
Yes, three of those Alabama teams lost a game, but that doesn't change the fact that they're champions. Their commitment to excellence and their willingness to fight on after those losses defined them far more than the losses did. Can the same be said of you?
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