Competition: People Come First

8/25/2005

Do I like playing well? Well, all things being equal, I’d rather. But, at the same time, if you’re not keeping in mind other people and more important situations, then you’re really just robbing yourself. You’re just hollowing out yourself. Do you know what happens to something that’s hollow? It’s easily crushed. It just collapses. If you take everything out of the inside of an egg, then it doesn’t take anything to break the egg, right? If you’re hollow inside, if there’s nothing in there, you’ll be easily crushed. And if you won’t look towards other people, and look towards sport situations (whether it’s volleyball or whatever it is) as just a tool towards something greater, then you’ll be gradually making yourself more and more empty on the inside. Because those things are only meant to serve a purpose of deepening us and deepening relationships. If it’s not serving that purpose, then it’s draining the life out of us instead.

So, when you make a great shot, shake it off. You don’t have to draw attention to it, you don’t have to applaud yourself and pat yourself on the back, you don’t have to gloat and be enamored with yourself, you don’t have to have a stupid smirk on your face for the next half an hour because you did something great. Shake it off, wipe it off, get rid of it. That’s pride, it’s evil. You don’t need that. It’s only going to hurt you in the long term.

When somebody else on the other hand does something good, do everything you can to make sure that you honor them for that. So, if you get yourself into a mano-a-mano golf war, be as happy for them to win as you would be for yourself. And honestly feel that from the heart. Don’t sneer and resent and be frustrated and make excuses for yourself; and make excuses for them (“They sure were lucky!”) If you get all that bitterness, when you say that to somebody or even just think that in your heart, “They sure were lucky when they beat me!” does that make you feel better, or do you kind of feel dirty and gross on the inside? Do you know what I’m talking about? Have you ever felt that on the inside where you just sneer at something or someone. Does that make you feel better inside or does that make you feel ugly inside? If it doesn’t make you feel ugly inside, I’m worried about you. Because satan already owns you.

If it does make you feel ugly inside, it’s because God’s calling to you, saying “Listen to My Voice. That’s not who I am. I want you to feel ugly, because I want you to know: that’s not part of Me. This is My Gift to you: I‘m going to let you feel how ugly this is, so that you’ll have the chance to change your heart. I’m going to allow you to feel something called conviction. I’ll let you feel dirty on the inside, so that you can turn your face towards Me and say: ‘I’m sorry’. And then you can turn your face towards your friends and tell them you’re sorry, for your little snide remark, for the way you minimize their accomplishment, or maximized your own accomplishment, and gloated, or the way you fretted and frowned, or schemed about it.”

So, these are all things that are not necessarily easy to learn. And all the temptations that come with it. As God said: “No temptation has seized you, except what’s common to man,” meaning, we’ve all felt those same temptations too. But it’s what you do with it, now that you know that it matters. The next time you’re tempted to gloat and get a smirk on your face, to strut around and be cocky and trash talk, look at the inside and see how ugly and dirty that feels; and look at others and see how that can’t possibly build them up. It can only harm their loyalty to you. Their desire to be with you, the pleasure they might take from your company—is stolen. You’re damaging everything that’s good, inside of you, as well as towards others. And you’re exalting satan to a throne that he doesn’t deserve, by grabbing a hold of the same pride that got satan thrown out of heaven.

So, working hard at something is good, and a little bit of fun, and competition is fun, too; but be very careful, that you’re not harming others, or doing something to the inside of yourself that would be searing or hardening your own conscience, your own heart, by being drawn to something worldly and useless, instead of just using it as a tool to grow and to have relationships with others.

That’s something that you don’t have to be thirty to learn the hard way, after you’ve damaged somebody and lost a friendship or hardened your own heart. You don’t have to be thirty to find out these things. You can go ahead and start learning them now, during a volleyball game or a ping pong game or a golf game or whatever. Go ahead and keep you heart soft and try to remember some of these things. Talk about them openly with your friends and with the adults and so on, making sure that you can learn them now. Because you don’t want to have a trail of broken relationships and offended people and a messed up life at the age of thirty. You have an opportunity to start fine tuning some of these things now.

So, turn your eyes towards God and away from yourself and then look towards others. And I think you’ll find that your lives will be a lot better place and that God will be more pleased and that you’ll be positioning yourselves much better for a future and a hope, than if you were all consumed by all this silly meaningless stuff. Make sense?

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I know that I would very much like to play basketball, volleyball, golf, tennis etc. with somebody, knowing that that person has made some Vertical Decisions that they’re going to care about me. That would be great! I wouldn’t care if we win or lose! They’re going to try hard, they’re going to care about me. That sounds like a great game!