We are three weeks away from playing our first football game of the season. But it was in late May that we began to install our offensive and defensive schemes. We know that in order for us to be ready for our first game, we needed to slowly get our athletes in the right frame of mind for the grueling season ahead.
As you know, not everything goes according to plan or as smoothly as you would hope. We start by getting their bodies in the best possible shape so they can hold up to the task we are asking them to endure. Then we prepare their minds to take in information and process it as fast as they can, because when we get to our first game, we want them to play fast and hard.
Throughout this time of preparation, we talk to them about how important it is to be one unit, because when it gets hard, and it will get hard, we must remember why we are in this battle together. We remind them how we must keep each other accountable to the vision we all agreed to when we first started in May.
As coaches, we all start in similar ways with our teams as we prepare them for their seasons of sport. As followers of Jesus, God has a plan for our lives, and He has given us a playbook to live by: the Bible. In this playbook, we find everything we need to know about the team we are battling. Our playbook is unique because every play we call works if we believe. There’s no other playbook like ours in the entire world.
What playbook do you know of that actually reveals who’s going to win the game before it ever starts? Our playbook tells us what we will win and how we will celebrate and with whom we will celebrate! How would you not want to play on or coach this team?
But you would be surprised how many of us don’t even know we play on this team, even when we know the OneCoach. Imagine what the world of coaching would look like if we were one team of coaches throughout the world serving the one true Living Coach? Having the best Motivator, who is the Creator of the universe and Maker of Heaven and earth on your team?
You as a coach can make a difference when you start thinking not as the world thinks, but as the One True Coach thinks. The coach on the other team, if he or she is a follower of Jesus, is on your team. What? The Bible tells us in John 13:35, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Let’s start living this way and see what our God can do in and through us.
– Coach Joe Nu’u is a linebackers coach at Valor Christian High School. He is a speaker and author of the book, “Invisible Lines.”
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