The other day my friend Mike and I were playing Madden football on Playstation. We play this game pretty religiously and like any other mach male egos, we love it when we win and we hate it when we lose. I have seriously walked away some nights when we have played with a feeling deep in the pit of my stomach from suffering a lose so devastating. There’s just something about losing that a man can’t tolerate. It’s like a blow to his masculinity when another man get’s the best of him, even in something as simple as a video game. Face it, none of us love to lose. Why? We were born to win and were never meant to suffer from something called defeat. When we do experience the heartbreak that comes from losing it can sometimes be devastating and almost impossible to take. Some loses are worst than others. When you were very close to winning but came up short. That hurts! When you at one time had the lead and lost it. That hurts! Something however happened on this one particular night that really rang home an eternal truth that I hope I never forget. You have to know Mike and I. Football is life. Literally! I mean I can get so many life lessons out of the game of football, that the game itself has grown to be a teacher to me over the years. Some of these lessons have been very rewarding and triumphant at times and others like I have said before, were very devastating. I know it’s only a video game, but you play marbles with your kids, you still want to win. The unique thing about playing with Mike on the Madden football game is that it has become something I like to call “video simulation”. You’ve heard of this before I’m sure. Commercial airliners use video simulation to train their pilots. The military uses video simulation to train jet fighters, tank commanders, and other various types of personnel that will be operating heavy machinery in the field of a high tech profession. Why are they doing this? Simple. They want to know how you will react to a certain event, know how you will operate this specific form of technology, hone and sharpen your skills in the areas where you are lacking. They want to see how you will handle things when you are behind the wheel. There is something interesting to note here. They actually want you to make a mistake. Why? Well simple, because it’s better that you make a mistake in a simulated virtual reality world that in the real one. It’s better for a pilot to make the mistake of not knowing his altitude, engaging his landing gear too slowly, or not knowing his instrument panel in the simulated world than in the real one. In the simulated world he will simply lose points on a test. In the real world his mistakes can cost people their lives. So the experts and teachers behind all of the testing and grading actually want the students in the mechanical fields to make mistakes, because then that shows them what they need to work on. In life you have to make mistakes. It’s the only way we learn. There is an old saying that goes, “I’ll be old enough to live when I’m old enough to die.” In other words when I’ve really learned about life and made all the mistakes and learned from them I’ll probably be about ninety-five by the time I finally get it. It doesn’t have to be this way. There are those who make mistakes and learn from them and there are those who make mistakes and just simply keep on making them. This is what separates and defines the wise from the foolish in this world. The biggest reason we have to learn from our mistakes I think is because the mind and the brain remember and associate memory to pain easier than any other emotion in the realm of our souls. We remember our hurts and our pains in life. We just do. Pain just seems to be the tape that sticks a certain event in our life to the wall of our memories. Pain is the tape, the abuse, hurt, heartbreak, damaging words or whatever may have happened to us are the little notes that we apply to our minds and souls that we go back and look on in our subconscious when making a decision in the future that relates somehow to the lesson that that one moment taught us.
What video simulation is to the pilot is exactly what Madden Football has become for me. It has tested me and taught me so much about life and war. You might be surprised by me using the word war. Well I’ll tell you right now, that’s exactly what we’re in a spiritual war. The sooner you start treating Christianity as war and not like religious pomp and orthodox boxed in thinking the sooner you will experience the kind of life that God has for you. Football is also war. It is a pattern and is similar to war in many ways. Each end zone is a country and each army or team is trying to invade each others end zone. In the process many valuable lessons can be learned.
There was one particular game Mike and I were playing that really spoke something to me that God had already been speaking to me about a week or two before. Psalms 119:60 gives us insight on how to run a play that God gives you.
“I made haste, and delayed not to keep thy commandments.”
God had been speaking this word to me about a week or two before Mike I played this one certain afternoon. I kept seeing this verse pop up and I had a hunch that God was going to ask me to do something that would require prompt obedience. I just didn’t know what it was. So I was keeping my eyes and ears open to His voice to see what the call from headquarters would be.I was tested sure enough one night at my church. Every Wednesday at our evening church service we have prayer at the end of the service. Everyone gets to make a request and share something if they want to. One night everyone was requesting and getting things off their hearts, and I had a feeling that I should request prayer for a friend of mine that was going through a very hard time in his life. The opportunity was there and the lady who was leading the prayer asked if anyone else had anything on their hearts. I just kept thinking , “I can pray for him myself or pray for him when we pray here” I never asked for any prayer for him. So we prayed and the service was over. Well at the time of this writing things still haven’t changed for my friend, and I wonder if God just wasn’t using that to teach me something. Well a week or so later He used Madden Football on play station to teach me this truth.
Mike and I were playing an intense game that was very close. I was playing with the Denver Bronco’s and Mike was playing with the Indianapolis Colt’s. I actually got off to a good start in this game, building a fourteen point lead. Mike eventually caught up with me though and we were just swapping licks back and fourth and hoping we would have the ball last, so the other person couldn’t score.
Here was the scenario. There was about a minute left in the game, late in the fourth quarter and Mike had a seven point lead. He had the ball and was driving even though he didn’t have to. Why was he still driving instead of running the clock out? Because Mike doesn’t believe in downing the ball and doing a quarterback kneel. He just plays until the end. He hates it when I have the ball and the lead and I sit on the ball and run the clock out. It’s a feeling of helplessness that drives him crazy. He calls it cowardly, I call it control. Like Yoda told Luke, “Control, control, you must learn control!” So Mike doesn’t down the ball just keeps running plays, I have used up all my timeouts and I cant stop the clock. Well I played good defense and cornered him to a fourth down play. He snaps the ball on fourth down and I am headed toward Peyton Manning like a runaway train, Mike throws the ball only for it to be incomplete. Before the snap of the ball there was about three seconds left on the game clock. After there was one second. He turns the ball over on downs and I have one shot at scoring a touchdown and tying the game.
I am scrolling through my playbook and can’t seem to find a play. At this point I’m pretty nervous and want just the right play with enough receivers to where if one isn’t open I can go to another. I look and look and cant seem to find the right play. All the while that I am looking for the perfect play, the play clock is running mad. When your at a crucial time like this in a game time seems to take on a whole new speed. So I said to myself, “Well I can take a delay of game penalty and just try again.” Well by the time I chose a play there was like four or five seconds left on the clock and my offense didn’t set up and snap the ball in time. I got flagged for delay of game. This was alright with me because its just a five yard penalty. I was already on the Colt’s forty yard line and five more yards didn’t make that much of a difference. There was one big glaring problem though. When I let the play clock run down and got called for the delay of game something happened that I had totally forgot. So many seconds have to run off the clock as a penalty alongside of the five yards you lose. In other words, there was no time left! Game over!
I felt sick after this game. I had gotten the miracle play to get the ball back and give myself a chance and I blew it. I simply sat on the clock and did nothing! I was dumbfounded. Don’t get me wrong, nothing was really guaranteed. I might not have made the touchdown even if I had ran the play. The point is though, you get an opportunity, DON’T SIT ON IT! DON’T DELAY! EXECUTE!
You see folks, God can do great things for us. God can give us great opportunities. It is up to us though, to carry out the mission and run the play. We can’t just sit on our hands and look for the “perfect” way to do things, just do what He has called you to do, or you might get called for delay of game!
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