Game Day

These last 2 weeks of training in Indianapolis at the National FFA Center has been exciting/challenging/full of new information/exhilarating as we think of the organization we get to serve!

Each day we’ve gotten to walk into a room that bursts at the seams with potential to learn. There are walls covered with flipcharts, color splashed everywhere, a table brimming with supplies, and faces of people that I care deeply about. This one poster in particular has really captured my attention.

This perspective is not just applicable to a classroom or to a sports arena, but as a person seeking a greater purpose in life.

Thinking back to high school, on Thursday morning everything changed because it was ‘Game Day’ for our cross country team. I ate differently, dressed differently, spent my time differently over lunch, parked in a different lot, and packed a different bag for the meet. All of these changes led to me acting differently on those days.

If I’m willing to change habits in order to prepare for a running meet, why wouldn’t we change to live a life serving the God of the Universe. Surely, we can see the greater value that we can find in a life lived for Christ versus how I changed basically every single habit of my time for a cross country meet.

Every single day is ‘game day’ in the sense that once we are saved God has a great commission for the work of our lives. When we wake up there is a greater calling on our life than the selfish pursuits that we may desire. No longer do we have to try to seek or even earn our own happiness or contentment. It’s not up to us to secure safety in the next lifetime. He has already done this.

Currently, I’m reading “Don’t Waste Your Life” by John Piper (rave review!!!). Piper helps to clarify over and over that there is nothing greater than committing our lives to seeking a relationship with Christ.

“What is the one passion of your life that makes everything else look like rubbish in comparison? Oh, that God would help me waken in you a single passion for a single great reality that would unleash you, and set you free from small dreams, and send you, for the glory of Christ into all the spheres of life and to all the peoples of the earth.”

Game day in this sense is the fervent chase that we have after  the cross. When we call on Jesus as the man who died for our sins and saves us from our own judgment, we have a purpose that calls us to have a passion for serving Him that supersedes  anything else that we could imagine investing our lives in.

A verse that really helps remind me that everyday is game day is:

“Lord remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered and that my life is fleeting away.”

                                                         ~Psalm 39:4

We should be intentional in every conversation, every interaction with people, and every investment of our time. Life is brief. It’s short. Why would we waste it?

Everyday there is work to be done. Everyday there is a noble mission to be fulfilled.

Are you living as if today is game day?