Play Ball!

I can hardly wait for football season to kick off. I love football, especially Wolfpack football. Hopefully we will build on last year’s ending and start strong and stay strong throughout this season. Whenever I look at the team’s website I see nothing but excitement and anticipation. We expect a great year. As I was browsing the website and reading all of the positive and upbeat predictions I got to wondering if there were any teams that at this point in the preseason were expecting to have a terrible year. Have you ever heard a coach report that he had a terrible bunch of players and the only hope they had for a single win was for the other team to not show up? No one wants to hear the truth, especially if the truth is bad news. The prophet Amos got ran out of his country, Israel, because the people did not want to hear the truth. Amos told the Israelite’s that their king, Jeroboam, would die and the people would be taken into exile. They looked around and thought things were looking “good” and could only get better. They refused to face the truth and demanded he leave. (Amos 7) As I look around at our world today, I see more and more that our society does not want to hear the “Truth”. The world would rather hear bright and rosy predictions and cliches instead of the Word of correction and truth. I say this not as a word of “woe is me” and let’s just give up, but a word of encouragement to fellow followers of Jesus Christ. We must tighten our belts. Like a good football team we must better prepare ourselves for game days. The battle is here; the season is long; let us prepare ourselves through constant prayer, diligent study of His Word, and fresh stirring of His presence that resides within us, His Holy Spirit. We must prepare ourselves to be laughed at, to be tormented, and even to be run out of town while at the same time prepare ourselves to be strong in His truth and steady in His love. The season is here, now let’s go play ball! Blessings