Get Your Head In The Game

Romans 13:11

As we are approaching VBS, I felt that today maybe we needed to talk a little bit about sports and how sports influences our Christian walk and talk.

A few years ago, a movie called “Hoosiers” told the story of a small-town basketball team that miraculously made it to the state championship. During an intense game, the team’s coach sent a player from the bench into the game, but before going out on the court the boy, a devout Christian, knelt to pray.

And he continued to pray, delaying the game on the court. Finally, the coach leaned down and said, “Son, God wants you out on the court now.”

Some of us are like that – we’re still praying for God to strengthen us for the game, when God wants us to get into the thick of the game, promising that he will be our strength.

We have a number of people this year that are stepping out on faith and preparing to teach not only the children of our church, but the children of the surrounding communities about God and Jesus and his love for us.

These teachers may not realize it, but they are on mission for God. This may be just one mission that God has in store for you, though. Are you fulfilling your mission or are you putting off your mission? Today it seems to me that a lot of people are guilty of the latter, putting God’s mission off.

The truth is, time is running out for you to fulfill your life mission!

Even if Jesus doesn’t return for another 100 years, you only have a limited time to complete your life mission. Your days on earth are numbered, and you can only share your faith with others while you’re here in this world. For that matter, you can only share your faith with others while they’re still in this world.

Back in the 19th-century, a missionary to China named Hudson Taylor said he was talking to a Buddhist leader, one who’d become a follower of Christ. The former Buddhist asked Taylor how long the gospel had been known in England.

“For hundreds of years,” Taylor said.

The new convert began to cry. He said, “For hundreds of years! My father sought the truth for more than 20 years, and he died without finding it. Why didn’t you come sooner?”

And that question burned in Hudson Taylor’s soul as he thought about the millions of Chinese who’d never heard of Jesus Christ.

So what?

· Get into the game – There are still more than 3,000 people groups in the world with no known church, no local witness, and no eternal hope. They’ve never heard about Jesus. That seems to be a hard number for us to understand. Let’s break it down a little closer to home. How many people do you think that live in Saline County, Williamson County, Hamilton County, that have never heard the gospel message? I have a feeling that if we knew what that exact number was that we would be surprised. It takes people getting involved and in the game to get the message to the people that live around us.

· Understand this pivotal moment – Rick Warren, author of the Purpose Driven Life, explains it this way: “We are in a pivotal moment in history. We have to stop making excuses for why we cannot go. It’s not too far; it’s not too costly; it’s not too dangerous; it’s not too inconvenient. Not anymore. It’s time to stand up and say that we will be the last generation to have to answer the question, ‘Why didn’t you come sooner?’”

Are you guilty of making excuses? Are you guilty of thinking that going and telling someone about Jesus is too far, too costly, too dangerous, too inconvenient? All of us have used these excuses from time to time. Today, though, I think we will be held more responsible for our communication of the gospel with the world, or our lack of communication, than any generation has ever been before. Why? We have so many avenues to spread the Gospel message.

This question may apply basically to our teens and college students, maybe some of the rest of you as well, how many of you have “myspace” accounts on the internet? For the ones of you that are not familiar with myspace, it is a place that members can post pictures, articles, kind of online journals. Now, how many of you mention Christ anywhere on your myspace page? That is a place that you could be spreading the message of Jesus to your friends. If you don’t know what to put there, talk to me, I can give you some help.

The biggest thing that God wants is people that are willing to go for him.

· ‘I will go’ – God wants you moving toward your mission now. You may need to pray about your concerns, fears, or indifference. You may need to simply pray, “God, I don’t know when, where, or how, but I will go.”

When you pray that prayer be ready, because God will give you somewhere to go, someone to share with, someone to make a difference in their life.

They may ask you, just like the convert asked the missionary that we talked about a little while ago, Why didn’t you come sooner?