Imagine that you are on a ball team and this is your senior year. You have advanced all the way to the final game. This game will determine the season’s state champions. Your team has worked hard to get this far. You have practiced endlessly. Your team has no losses, although you have had some close calls! You’ve studied the videos on these past games, assessed your strengths and weaknesses and worked at improvement. Your work toward this point has not been going on just for the past year but for the last eight years; your team has worked together and grown together, learning how to accommodate each other’s weaknesses. Now you play together, not as individuals playing on one team, but as one unified team, working and thinking together.
Imagine also, that your coach is absolutely brilliant at his work! You have learned over the years that when the coach calls a play, it is exactly the right play to call. He knows who should do what, who should guard whom, and how to run the play exactly. He also has the other team’s play-book! He knows what plays they’re going to run, and the who, how, and why of all their plays. He knows the other team’s coach. He even trained the other coach and literally knows what that coach is going to do before he does it!
It’s not a matter of what the coach knows or what he tells you. It’s simply a matter of the team working together and dong exactly what the coach says to do. When you do that, you win the championship game, are declared the state champions, and can go to bed that night, bruised and physically and mentally tired, but thrilled that you did your best and won a hard-earned trophy.
This scenario is very much similar to what going to heaven is like. We are on a team, members of the church of Christ, the body of Christ (Rom. 12:5). This is our only effort to win the game of life; once we die, it’s over (Heb. 9:27). We practice endlessly to get our lives to be like Christ’s exercising our senses to discern between good and evil (Heb. 5:14). We are sometimes tempted, but the trying of our faith produces patience, experience, and hope (Rom. 5:3-4), and a much finer, leaner Christian (Prov. 25:4). When we work together with other Christians we learn that each has his or her own strengths and weaknesses and we learn how to complement one another and make up where the other is deficient, because we all have a part to play (1 Cor. 12:11-12).
Studies generic sildenafil online indicate that it can also be a symptom of heart disease and can cause pain in muscles with spasm. Effective and Potent Despite being levitra uk http://www.donssite.com/OPTICALIILLUSIONS/next6.htm available at hand, this is one of the most selling anti-impotence medicines. tadalafil uk price Statistics have shown that almost 50% males in the world are suffering from ED cannot have a successful love life. Countering that, disreputable businesses will have friends or employees register viagra online india poor reviews of a competitor.
Our coach is none other than God Himself! As Christians, the Coach calls the plays. He leads us through His word – the Word of Truth (John 17:17). He knows how we should act in every situation and through His Word, He has given us principles to guide us in those situations, such as in Romans 12 and Galatians 5:22-23. He also knows our opponent, our adversary – Satan, the Devil. Since Satan is not God, then God is more powerful than Satan! Even though Satan transforms himself into an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14), God has revealed his methods to us so that we are not ignorant of how he works (2 Cor. 2:11). God lets us in on Satan’s play-book! Also, God knows what Satan’s going to do, before he does it (1 Cor. 10:13).
So – it’s not a matter of what the Coach knows or what He tells us. It’s simply a matter of the church working together and doing exactly what the Coach says to do. When we do that, we will win the game of life, we will be declared more than conquerors (Rom. 8:37), and can go to judgment, bruised and spiritually and mentally tired, but thrilled that we did our best and won – not a hard-earned, but an undeserved trophy – eternal life (Rom. 2:7)!
Paul Holland
