Note: I’m blessed to have my friend and fellow elder, Brad Wade, as our guest blogger on “Family & Friends Friday.” Brad and his wife Peggy have been married for 22 years, and have two children: Ryan (in college) and Megan (in high school). They have been at Webster Bible Church for nearly 13 years. They were among the first believers I baptized when I came on as pastor in 2011. Brad and Peggy have a genuine love for Christ which is reflected in their relationships with others, especially those in our own church family.
Brad is also big into sports, as you will see in today’s article. Enjoy!
I love sports, and I love competing. I’ve spent much of my life either playing or coaching a sport where a major theme is to pursue victory. Of course, there are many benefits one can gain from competition including:
physical fitness
developing improved teamwork
learning how to deal with both victory and defeat in a healthy, Christ-honoring way.
However, all of that is accomplished in the participant’s pursuit of victory. There is a saying in sports: “That’s why they play the game.” This means that no matter what the pregame odds are or what each team looks like “on paper,” no competition is ever a sure thing. I could give example after example of this from my own many years of personal experience. One of the more recent examples comes from my son’s senior year baseball and basketball teams. Both teams ended their season with a win in the championship game where, in both cases, the other team was heavily favored and had already beaten our team multiple times during the season.
Turning to the professional world of sports, growing up a Buffalo Bills fan, the phrase “wide right” still haunts me and other Bills fans to this very day, even though that infamous kick happened almost 30 years ago! While on the topic of the Bills, just this year, while playing against the Bills, the Arizona Cardinals snatched victory from the jaws of defeat as they caught an extremely improbable “Hail Mary” pass on the last play of the game. Another sure victory for the Bills literally ripped away from them!
As a big baseball fan and a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals, one of my favorite television sports moments came during game 6 of the 2011 World Series where the St. Louis Cardinals were 1 strike away from losing the World Series to the Texas Rangers. In fact, they were down to their last strike multiple times in both the 9th inning and then in extra innings, yet somehow still managed to win that game in walk-off fashion and then, ultimately winning game 7 to give them their 11th world championship.
There are so many other examples of competitions like this. Year after year, one of my favorite sporting events is the NCAA basketball championship tournament. The main reason I love it is because the games are typically so close, regardless of the seed (rank) of the teams, and it seems that there are nightly highlights of shots floating through the air as the final buzzer sounds. Shots that, if made, will send one team on to the next round, and if missed will send a team home and will end the careers of some of the players on the team. After a hard-fought game, it all comes down to one final shot.
Outside of the world of sports, the line between victory and defeat can often be very slim as well. In the 2000 presidential election, the winner of the Florida electoral votes would win the presidency. When all was done, George Bush won Florida and it’s electoral votes by only 537 total votes, a margin of 0.009%.
So here’s the point:
In our lives and in this world,
no victory is certain.
So many of the contests we watch or participate in can go either way and ultimately can’t be determined until the very end of the game, the election, the match, or whatever.
HOWEVER, there is One for which all victories are known, clear & decisive. You guessed it - God Almighty! There is no need for a final “Hail Mary” (no pun intended), buzzer-beater, recount, or any of that. God doesn’t squeak by His opponents — He obliterates them!
The Holy Scriptures are full of examples of God’s clear victories and is, in fact, the theme of the Bible as a whole! Consider how God delivered the Israelites out of Egypt, as told in Exodus. He didn’t have them sneak out in the middle of the night hoping no one would spot them. No, he delivered them in broad daylight, ultimately swallowing up Pharoh’s army in the Red Sea. Wow!
Or how about the story of David and Goliath - a young shepherd boy versus a huge battle-tested warrior. God delivered a swift and clear victory to David using just a sling and a stone. It was so decisive, it can barely be considered a fight at all!
Another one of the many examples of God’s clear and decisive victories is recorded in the book of Joshua. God delivered Joshua a victory over the city of Jericho by telling Joshua to march around the city over 7 days, blowing a trumpet, and shouting. The walls of Jericho then collapsed and the army was able to charge in and take the city. Another clear victory!
This leads me to the most important and most decisive victory in the history of the universe - Christ’s once and for all victory over sin, death, and Satan! In Genesis 3:15, commonly called the “Protevangelium” — a term that essentially signifies the idea of the “first gospel proclamation.” The Lord said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” In living the perfect life that we couldn’t, in the shedding of His blood and His death on the cross, and finally in His resurrection and ascension into Heaven to sit at the right hand of God the Father, Christ earned this eternal decisive victory, known from the beginning of time, once and for all! In THIS victory is where we find OUR eternity! If you have received Christ as your Lord and Savior, you share in this victory! You have eternal life! If however, you have not yet received Christ, you can still join the winning team! In Acts 16, someone asks the all-important question “What must I do to be saved?”. The answer is given: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” Oh what an awesome victory celebration it will be one day with the whole team in Heaven!
So, regardless of the outcome of the first Bills home playoff game this millennium, or the outcome of any other situation in your life, just remember that for those in Christ, the ultimate victory is ours!