I’ve now had the opportunity to work with inner-city boys (ages, 7 to 13) on 4 different occasions at camp. On each occasion, the kids were generally fantastic until we stepped foot on the basketball court. Then, all the nicety-nice stuff we learned in chapel and talked about during devotions seemed to fly out the window. It was game time, and they all came to win! I played a lot of b-ball in my day, and many of these guys have much more natural ability than I ever had, but they may not win a lot of games for one reason – they’ve not yet learned to play as a team. They are still in that immature stage where they see the game as an individual show and not a team sport. I would love to say that this mentality only shows up among young boys at summer camp. But, I think we all know better. How often do our own competitive juices get the best of us in our homes, our schools, and sadly, even our churches. We want the biggest laugh, the biggest house, the nicest car, the fullest church. We tend to measure our “success” in numbers – as if souls can be counted like coins. We track weekly attendance, number of baptisms, visitors and visitations made, monthly giving, etc. If we serve, we want our part to be noticed and appreciated. I recognize some of these things are necessary, but I think we’d all we wise to remember the words of legendary basketball coach John Wooden – a guy who knew a thing or two about building winning teams, “It is amazing how much can be accomplished if no one cares who gets the credit.” Work hard, serve well. Know that God sees all and will reward justly when the time comes. In the meantime, don’t worry yourself with who gets the credit. Just serve…Dave (To receive these free daily devotions via email, subscribe at asIAMministries.org)
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 11:00:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015