CHARGER NATION: GAME #5

Charger Nation,

            I want to congratulate our JV team for another big win last night.  I appreciate the coaches and the hard work they put into it.  I appreciate all you parents having your kids here to work this week when they did not have school.  Each player is getting better and better and it is a joy to watch.  Nothing is guaranteed in life, but hard work will get us somewhere.  I think these lessons the boys are learning in their teenage years through the game of football will be a foundation to having successful careers in life. 

            Tonight we play Trinity Christian.  My good friend is the head coach there in Kenny Dallas.  Kenny was a head coach at Landmark for a long time and then he worked at ELCA from 2014-2016.  Kenny is one of the best coaches you will find.  He is a great leader and a hard worker.  I have a tremendous amount of respect for him.  I am a better coach because of playing Kenny and working with Kenny.  God has used him in my life to make me a better coach.  He has done a remarkable job and built a great football team.  They players, parents, and fans are excited at Trinity and they can’t wait to come and play us.  It should be a fun game for everyone. 

            My goal in life is to not win a football game or to go and become a coach in college or anywhere else.  As a Christian, the more I grow in Christ, the more I realize my plans must align with God’s plans.  My goals in life must align with God’s goals for me in life.  My goal in life is to do what God has be doing to the best of my ability.  My goal in life is to become more and more like Christ: To live in Christ and to put on Christ daily.  This is not easy because the world and our flesh are in direct opposition to the Spirit living in us.  What God commands us to do and what we know to be right we do not want to do.  And to make it even harder because we already don’t want to do it, the world tells us we shouldn’t follow God’s way and plan. 

Thinking about all of this, I have a hard teaching for us today in which we all struggle if we are honest.

            “Do nothing our of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others as more significant than yourself.  Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interest of others.” Philippians 2:3-4

            I have had many people come up to me in the past year and talk about the Trinity game and how we really need to beat Kenny.  I have had many people who are connected with Trinity and they tell me how bad they want to beat ELCA.  I do not feel this way.  I do not like to play my friends.  Kenny and I are the same.  We put a tremendous amount of effort and energy into developing young men all year long.  Then it comes football season time and it becomes a job that never stops.  There are all types of issues a head coach has to deal with that you only understand if you have been head coach.  Kenny and I are friends and we encourage each other.  We constantly remind each other of why God has called us to coach this game and we need to have joy in the process.  I’ve played against Kenny and worked with Kenny.   Over the past twelve years we have grown into almost brothers. 

            My goal tonight is not to go and beat Kenny.  I do not see myself as a better coach than Kenny.  I do not look at beating Kenny as me establishing myself as a better coach than him.  I want us to win because we have worked hard and I love the boys I coach.  I know Kenny feels the same on his end.  This is not a Coach Gess vs Coach Dallas game.  As far as I am concerned it will never be about me.  This is ELCA Football vs Trinity Football.  When that ball is kicked off tonight it is our boys vs the other boys.  I have a lot invested in our boys.  I love these boys.  We play football to win!  But it is not about Kenny Dallas for me.  I love Kenny just like I love our boys.  I want Kenny to be successful and win.  But tonight my love for our boys overrides that.  It isn’t about me.  It isn’t about Kenny.  It is about our boys!

“If you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth.  This is not the wisdom that comes from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.  For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist there will be disorder and every vile practice.  But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.” James 3:14-17

            If we are honest with ourselves, we live life in bitter jealousy because of our selfish ambition.  Only really now, at this stage in my life, is God showing that selfish ambition is demonic and destroys.  I use the example of Coach Dallas and me in this game.  I consider us close to brothers.  Every since I knew I was going to play Kenny God warned me to never make it a rivalry.  God was showing me that my selfish ambition to win would destroy great relationships he has created to be enjoyed and used as a source of encouragement.  Sin will creep in and destroy everything good and pure.  Sin looks good for a minute but will destroy and divide.  The Lord’s warning is always clear: “Pursue excellence!”

            Do we not see families destroyed because of selfish ambition?  Maybe Dad wants to get to the top of his career latter but he cannot do this with his family needing him.  He has to choose between family and career and he chooses his selfish ambition.  Do we not see this with brothers and sisters at war with each other?  It is their selfish ambition that creates jealousy that leads to great division.  Do we not see this in families vs families?  We want our children to be better athletes, prettier, smarter, or more popular and in our selfish ambition we become jealous. 

            Selfish ambition leads to jealousy.  Jealousy leads to anger.  Anger leads to wrath.  The world tells us selfish ambition is good.  But the world cannot see the horrible effects of sin.  Ambition does not stop at ambition in a sinful world.  Ambition becomes a rivalry.  A rivalry turns into extreme jealousy.  And you know that jealousy lead to anger and wrath. 

“What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?  Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?  You desire and do not have, so you murder.  You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.  You do have because you do not ask.  You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.  You adulterous people!  Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?”  James 4:1-4

            The teaching is clear.  Our motive should to do well should never be to be better than someone or to gain worldly glory.  Yes, this is what the world teaches us.  But, as Christians, God has shown us a better way.  We are not to do anything out of rivalry or conceit.  The root of this is our passion for glory and exaltation.  You might say, “Coach that is good motivation.”  It is not.  To operate with the sole motive to be the best and gain the glory of the world will destroy you and all relationships you have in the end if it has not done so already.

            The point of this game day devotion today is to show there is a better way.  I am not sinless and I do struggle with what I am preaching.  However, my goal is to become a coach who glorifies God in his thoughts and processes.  I want to win but I want my approach to winning to be God honoring and not self-seeking.  I want to finish with a conversation I had with Uriah last night and maybe it will make the point more clear of how God expects us to compete.  He is just five but his sinful focus on himself as that of an adult.

            As we were driving home last night after the JV game Uriah tells me he is the best at something.  Basically he is telling me that he is better than all his friends at a certain thing.  I want my son to be a competitor.  I want him to have those competitive juices.  I am sure I have fed this desire to the best in him.  So I’m happy that at least he has a desire to be good and then see how my own sinful competitiveness indwells in him.  Here is my response to Uriah but I was really preaching to me: (It was actually hard for me to tell him that he is completely wrong: He is not the best of his friends at what he was talking about…I didn’t break his spirit though I took it another direction.)

            Uriah-We don’t compare ourselves to other people.  Our focus is becoming the very best that we can be.  We will work hard everyday to be our very best.  We must work daily and diligently to be our best.  And we will do it for God’s glory: “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Colossians 3:23).   God made you specifically to do certain things for his glory and his Kingdom and you will never accomplish those things if you do not work hard.  We must consider our friends better and more important than us.  We must serve them and help them become all they can be.  Never consider yourself more important than your friends.  Count yourself as insignificant and help them become all they can be.  Work hard and practice everyday to be your absolute best and see where God takes you.  It is our job to work hard each day and then trust God to take us where he wants us.  And we do this while serving our brothers and counting them as more important than ourselves. 

            Now, he had no clue what I was saying.  Unless the Holy Spirit is living and moving in you this teaching makes no sense.  It is in direct opposition to the flesh and the world.  But I promise you this: This is the way to becoming all you can be.  The Bible tells us that if we want to live we must die.  If we want to live and become all we can be we must die to this demonic beast in us who is full of selfish ambition and jealousy.  If you fully surrender all you will fully gain all!  Trust in the Lord! 

The boys are ready!  We had a great week of practice and I’m excited to go out and compete tonight! 

“The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord.”
Proverbs 21:31

WHOLLY for Christ,

Coach Gess