“Here is a boy with five small barley loves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?” — John 6:9
Our high school basketball team was recently sharing what we call a “Yellow Jacket Minute.” We were using today’s verse, John 6:9, as our point of discussion. Relating the passage to basketball, we talked about giving everything we have to Jesus, much like the boy mentioned in this story did. He didn’t have much, but he gave it all.
Simply put, sometimes in basketball we may not be the tallest, the fastest or the best, but we can give what we have to Jesus. We can give our best talents to Jesus, but we can also give our shortcomings. Jesus wants our all. He literally wants all of us no matter how meager we think our all may be.
The world will tell us that giving our all will automatically guarantee the results we want over time. Yet, anyone who has spent some time playing basketball in a competitive environment knows that, humanly speaking, even when we give everything we have toward the cause, we still may not win it all, we still may miss the big shot or have a season-ending injury. The Bible teaches that we live in a fallen world. Giving our all does not guarantee worldly success. However, giving our all, even in a worldly sense, creates opportunities that we might not normally come across. On a deeper level, giving our all to Jesus does guarantee spiritual results.
When we give our all to Jesus and trust Him with the results, we know that in the end He will use everything in our lives to make us more and more into His image. It is our ultimate goal in Christ — to be like Him!
— Frick Frierson
If you would like to submit a reader devotional, please email all submissions to
devotionals@sportsspectrum.com.
