Alphabetical
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August 23, 2013
Set:
We say it all the time. It has become part of our lingo, and we don’t realize we are saying it. Most church meetings begin with these words: Let’s have a quick word of prayer. I believe these seven words grieve God’s heart, because He desires a lasting conversation—not lip service.
The underlying message is, “Before we get to the important stuff, let’s rush through the God stuff.” It becomes a rote habit that bypasses our heart. It helps us look spiritual, but lacks power. Connecting with God can't be rushed. God must think, “There they go again! I wish they wouldn’t think of Me as a ritual or a rabbit’s foot that they can rub for good luck before they start their meeting.”
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February 19, 2014
Set:
We coaches spend a great deal of time and energy trying to instill confidence in our athletes. Hopefully our efforts are effective not only in competition but also in every area of our players’ lives. False confidence, the sort that stems from reliance on ourselves or our circumstances, is quite common in sports because it so easily comes with much flexing of muscles. Quiet confidence, on the other hand, is the opposite of surety that is built on physical strength. Quiet confidence comes only through faith in God, and it results in an assurance that we can handle whatever we face. How often do we conduct team practice with a quiet confidence?
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May 04, 2005
Set:
I was approached the other day and asked if I was fat. Well, as a former athlete and coach who has put on a few since his glory days, I was taken aback. "I may be fat, but you're ugly," I kidded him. He laughed and responded, "Not that kind of fat!" I was interested to see how he was going to get out of this one.
He went on to tell me that the "fat" he had been talking about stood for Faithful, Available and Teachable. He told me that we need FAT people involved in the ministry. What a great thought! We most certainly do need FAT people in every area of life. Athletes need to be FAT. Coaches need to be FAT. Pastors need to be FAT. And the list goes on and on. The question now is ... Are you FAT?
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January 29, 2013
Set:
I heard a baseball coach give instructions to his player on base, telling him the same thing at least three times. Finally, the coach said in a sarcastic tone, “Do you understand what I mean?” His player acted as if he never heard his coach. An important skill in being a great competitor and successful in life is the ability to be teachable. We can’t be teachable if we think we know it all.
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August 07, 2013
Set:
One of my favorite Olympic events is the high jump. It is quite simply a thing of beauty to see the competitors in this event propel their bodies over a bar suspended almost eight feet in the air. It seems so effortless. The goal of each jumper is to jump the highest that they can while obtaining a minimal amount of failures.
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December 01, 2008
Set:
One athlete’s career-threatening injury is another athlete’s blessing in disguise. At least that’s been the case for Major League Soccer veteran and four-time All-Star Chris Klein, who tore his right anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in 2001 and his left ACL in 2004.
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December 09, 2004
Set:
I, like many Illinoisans, woke up Monday morning pleased to see that the University of Illinois men's basketball team rose to the top of the Associated Press' newly released poll. Their No. 1 ranking is only the third in Illini men's basketball history, and their first since 1989.
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May 08, 2014
Set:
Every time I turn around, I’m hit with another statistic—another number, another measurement. My friends who are math majors cling to this principle, and for them it makes the world go ’round. But for me, it just facilitates an overwhelming feeling of unworthiness. I can’t go a day without being measured by my GPA, my batting average, my fielding percentage, my time around the bases, height, weight…See where I’m going?
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August 09, 2007
Set:
Several athletes reached milestones in their athletic career in the past few days. Bonds hit #756, A Rod hit #500, Tom Glavine won is 300th game, and Tiger won another tournament for the third straight year. These athletes have accomplished amazing things in their careers and will continue to break records and set new milestones until their time in their sport is finished.
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March 21, 2012
Set:
How many times has a coach handed us a playbook or drawn a play diagram for us on the board? How many of us ever take our playbook home and look at it before bed just so we have an idea of what is going on? If we don’t understand the plays from the playbook, how many of us ever take the time to ask the coach about the plays and how to execute them properly? I used to be one of the guys who thought he’d learned something just by looking over his playbook.
As Christians many of us do the same thing with our Bibles. We pick them up here and there and look for the right “play” for our situation, or we skim them over hoping that we will gain wisdom by reading without going into depth.
