Play Your Own Game

It’s football time of year again, and this afternoon I listened to the final third of what the U of M broadcaster called"the biggest upset in Michigan football history," as the Wolverines were beaten by little Appalachian State. That’s neither here nor there (except that if you missed it, it’s your loss, because it was one of the most exciting finishes I’ve ever heard) but it brought this to mind:

Michigan tends to blow bowl games because they spend all season playing their own game (which they generally play quite well), and then go down south at the first of the year and play someone else’s game.

It don’t work.

I know you’re going to think this is selfish and un-Christian, but I’m going to say it, anyway.

If I want to succeed at life, my well­being and playing my game my way have to be my own top priorities.

So where are all those religious things like self­sacrifice, self­denial, etc.?

For starters, we’re never (that I can recall) told to lay down our bodies as living sacrifices to each other. Human beings have this absurd tendency to take everything from everyone that they can get, and then get mad when that person shrivels up and dies, or has a nervous breakdown or something. If I’ve laid down my life on God’s altar, I can be pretty sure He will sometimes tell me that I need to tell you "I can’t do that for you now." Even Jesus did that, leaving the crowds to go spend time with his father. Hmmm.

On top of that, human beings often want other people to do w

hat isn’t their job, and then they get mad when those people don’t have time or energy or focus enough to do what is their job. If I’m going to be what God created me to be, and do what He put me here to do, then I can’t do everything you want me to do, nor can I do even what I do your way. It’s got to be my way.

What?!! My way? Isn’t that selfish or something?

Now, come on. Do you think that a slingshot and stones was God’s way of killing giants? Or was it merely David’s way? Since I can’t think of any other instances when God wrought a mighty deliverance through a slingshot, I’d have to say that that was David’s way. God used it, and He made it work.

But David still had to have sense enough to play the game his way, rather than trying to play Saul’s game. He had to use something he knew how to use; something he had confidence in; something that he had tried and found true.

The Lord never told His people to fight using their enemies’ methods. Sometimes they had to follow His specific instructions, and sometimes they fought their own way, but they never used the methods of their enemies.

I can win only if I play my game.

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