Making or Breaking a Team?
Continued...
We may never admit to carrying such an attitude but our lack of transparency doesn’t change reality. By discouraging outward emotion from a child we are training them to be more like a robot or a zombie than like the beautiful Image they are meant to bear. We must be encouraged and encourage them to Jesus.
As a child I had the privilege to grow up in Kitchener playing competitive hockey. My AAA experience began at 8 years old in novice, when I first made the big AAA team. As it so happened we had a highly talented group of kids; some went on to NHL careers, and over the years we dominated our local league and won multiple OMHA (Ontario Minor Hockey Association) Championships.
Having played three years of hockey before All-Star began, I remember how different the attitudes were on our, winning, AAA team. First of all, the kids and parents as a whole weren’t caught up in blaming others. For the first time as a goalie, I saw my teammates encouraging me after I allowed a goal. I also heard the coach defend the goalies in the dressing room between periods so that the rest of the team understood we all shared in the responsibility and failure when we allowed a goal. We didn’t try to pretend there wasn’t a failure when there was one, but we didn’t blame any one person. Instead we took responsibility individually when required, but shared the blame together as a team.
As time passed with all the good seed being planted and cultivated we began to see our talents grow, individually and as a team, in a very special way. As a whole our team began to play without reservation or fear as our guide. We didn’t let our fear of looking foolish for our effort, even if we were to fail, stop us from playing with all of our collective hearts. We were encouraged by our coaches that our efforts were never done in vain, and we learned that courage wasn’t an absence of fear, but true courage was giving it all in spite of fear. It was validated to us as true by the fact that the only time we would see disappointment or anger from our coaches, for losing, were those rare occasions when we would reserve ourselves from a full and passionate effort.
As boys we learned from men that it was okay to rejoice when we were happy and to cry when we hurt. That was all part of the passion of being a team, and it was our fuel as a community of kids; spirit. Spirit, not bridled but nurtured, reformed to do a good thing. I recall a time in one of the first seasons we played AAA together, when after we lost a big game with a lot on the line, many of us in the dressing room were crying. I remember how much it hurt to give it all but still lose the game. I also remember how encouraging it was to be with teammates who were suffering the same way as I was, yet we had coaches who didn’t discourage our emotion but helped us to focus. In fact the coaches sorrowed with us. I don’t believe they cried, but they definitely mourned with us. (I know it’s only hockey, but that’s not the point)
The freedom we realized as kids from coaches who wanted us to be our best, and who proved it by not holding us back, allowed us to blossom into an incredible hockey team. For years we were feared by every other team, and we became legendary in the Kitchener Hockey system at that time. Other age groups would want to know what we were doing and how it was we were so successful. Some people came up with ideas that it was just a lucky age group combination; that the kids who were born in 1968 who played AAA Hockey together in Kitchener just happened to all have a high degree of talent.
Perhaps there was some truth to that theory, but having lived it I think it falls short of the whole truth. When our family moved to Brantford, where we lived for one year, I played AAA for their city. We had talented kids to be sure. In fact one of our teammates, Keith Jones, went on to have a good career in both the NHL, with Philadelphia and Colorado, and in a subsequent sportscaster role with TNT and TSN. But even with the raw talent we had on that AAA team in Brantford one could see, quite clearly, how different the spirit was from those teams I played on in Kitchener. There was a lot of holding back, a lot of blame, and tons of pride. The end result was, just as previously advertised, that our team went on to be a losing team.
Somehow it seems that when we hold back we can avoid the hurt that comes from losing, but in the end we wind up losing more.
In Christ, is that how we please God? Do we please God by holding back our full effort, pretending we don’t have emotions (claiming that to be a good thing), and criticizing our brothers and sisters who take risks in their faith in Jesus? I think Scripture says otherwise. I think God cherishes faith. I know God loves us very much and that He is pleased when we love Him enough to act in faith, and fail even publicly, so as to bring Him glory. I think God wants us to fight! Not with the sword, not with our might, but with the full armor of God, as one in faith with Jesus Christ. I think we are blessed when we go over the top for Him and follow the mission He has for all of us.
The thing is that’s risky, and there isn’t a church formula that’s going to remedy all the ugly bumps and bruises that come along in this fight. The questions remain though, are you and I in Jesus Christ fighting or just trying to get by? Are we laying down our pride and are we willing to look foolish for the sake of Jesus and His mission? Or are we trying to hijack the mission by being people who resemble robots without emotions who won’t risk failing? The only way we can see victory in the world around us will be through the Holy Spirit, not through our controlling things. Through Jesus we experience guidance so that our spirit can not only survive, but THRIVE as His Spirit lives in ours! We are meant to thrive individually in Christ and as one body with one mission. God should make our leaders out of His followers instead of, men who have learned techniques from other men, teaching men how to make it in this world.
Being without emotions, safely getting by, that isn’t our mission and it isn’t God glorifying. Don’t take my word for it, read the Bible. Jesus’ own words in Matthew 25: 14-30, tells us in The Parable of Talents, where it was the one man who was afraid to risk what his master had given him so he hid it away, that he was the man who the master called a wicked, lazy, and worthless slave who will find himself in the outer darkness, in that place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus gave it all. Everything He had He gave to the Father. Jesus wept with His friends even though He knew He would raise Lazarus from the dead. Jesus wept over Jerusalem. Jesus turned over the money changers tables in the Temple and, in so doing, displayed immediate anger. Jesus publicly called out the religious leaders as a brood of vipers and hypocrites and compared them to white washed tombs. Jesus suffered anxiety in the Garden of Gethsemane, so much so He was begging His Father to take what was coming away if it was His will. Jesus tolerated the humiliation of having one of His own spirited disciples, act in violence and cut the ear off of one His arresting agents. Yet Jesus wasn’t embarrassed or excusing himself from Peter. He didn’t scold Peter for his spirit, but instead taught him a lesson and then He fixed what Peter had damaged. Later He went as far as to use Peter’s spirit when He asked Peter 3 times if he loved Him; and if so then Peter was told to take Jesus’ direction.
God is so gracious and patient, and desires us to be complete and whole people... even though it cost Him everything. God knew Moses was going to mess some things up. God knew Moses had killed a man and fled in hiding. God knew Moses was going to blow his stack and smash the tablets. God knew Moses had difficulty with speaking and wasn’t confident. God knew Saul was an angry, murderous Christian hunter. God knew Saul was a man who relied on self-righteousness. God knew Peter was emotional, flaky, and unpredictable. God used each of these men greatly as each of these men became greatly dependent on God alone; they didn’t hold back, instead they feared God.
Paul didn’t write so much about his personal sufferings because he didn’t suffer. He suffered humiliation, rejection, persecutions, beatings, imprisonment, illness, you name it... and it must have hurt deeply. He asked God to take away the thorn in his flesh 3 times, yet God chose to leave it right where it was. Talk about humiliating! The man who was so powerfully touched by Jesus that so many people received healing through his ministry; that same man couldn’t find healing himself? That would be so embarrassing if Paul was worried about his personal reputation. That’s the kind of thing that might have caused proud people around Paul to justify themselves as to why they wouldn’t even attempt to give it all for Jesus. Those men around Paul, who were his critics, might well have seen him as a fool. Paul wasn’t hiding his talents away though. There was no option for Paul but to trust Jesus; risking, winning and losing, rejoicing in the body of Christ!
Sufferings in real life come with tears and laughter, but that’s how God made it. The most real human ever to live, Jesus Christ; God as a man filled with life overflowing suffered among us. Tears, anxiety, anger, and compassion, were all fully evident in Jesus Christ as He walked among us. And He loves when we live abandoned on and in Him. He loves when we really give Him all we have. He loves when we try and even when we lose. To lose in Christ is to gain. He loves when we are foolish to the world for Him!
I hope you’re encouraged today to go for it with all that you have been given, in Jesus Christ. What’s the worst that can happen in Jesus? And besides, if we act as a real team with His mission as the main mission then when we fail we have a team with us who shares in our failing, and that will help make things better. But let’s not forget, in Christ, there is victory which our Father says we have the authority to openly proclaim and rejoice in together!
And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.” Mark 16: 15
That means if you or I went into a forest today and preached Jesus Christ’s good news and no person was present to hear, it’s still the good news of Jesus anyway! The good news of Jesus Christ puts the powers of darkness in a corner. Jesus is good news for all of God’s creation and it’s always good news to proclaim Him!
God bless you and thanks for reading, I know it was a marathon. :)