“But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’” — 1 Samuel 16:7 (ESV)

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I once coached a player who knew her stats better than I did. After almost every match, she’d find me with the box score practically memorized and ask some version of the same question: “Coach, did I do enough?” She was talented and she worked hard, but her performance had become tangled up with how she saw herself, and when the numbers weren’t good, she didn’t just think she’d had a bad match. She felt like she had failed.

I’ve watched some version of that play out for years. Athletes attach their value to points, playing time, rankings and offers. And coaches aren’t immune either, because we can do the same thing with wins, championships and recruiting classes, or with whether anybody notices how hard we’re working. The problem is that your performance was never supposed to determine how much you’re worth.

There will always be another match, and somebody will eventually have better numbers. You may lose your starting position, get injured or work harder than you ever have and still not get the outcome you wanted. If your performance determines your worth, every one of those things becomes bigger than it should be. Because you’re no longer dealing only with disappointment — you’re letting the outcome tell you who you are.

Scripture gives us a completely different picture. When Samuel went to Jesse’s house to anoint the next king of Israel, Eliab looked like the obvious choice, and God corrected Samuel: “Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7b, ESV). David wasn’t even brought in with his brothers because he was out tending the sheep, and yet he was the one God chose. Long before David had a crown or a victory anyone would remember, God was looking at the heart while everyone else was looking at what they could see.

One of the easiest mistakes we make is letting a role or an accomplishment become an identity. When that happens, criticism becomes personal instead of useful, and our sense of worth starts rising and falling with outcomes and other people’s opinions, which is an exhausting way to live and not what God intended for us.

Your identity in Christ was established before you recorded a single point, earned a starting position, or won a championship. Your performance, role and opportunities can all change, and none of them get to decide what you’re worth.

That doesn’t mean performance doesn’t matter. I’m a coach, and I absolutely believe in working hard and pursuing excellence. Colossians 3:23 (ESV) tells us, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.” The difference is knowing where performance ends and identity begins. A bad game can tell you that you need to work on your passing, but it can’t tell you that you’re less valuable. A great stat line doesn’t make you more worthy than you were before the match, or more valuable than the athlete sitting beside you.

Eventually every athlete has to play their last match, and being an athlete goes from something that has been a huge part of your identity to something you used to do. If your identity has been built on what you accomplished in that uniform, that transition can be incredibly difficult. But if your sport is something you do rather than the source of who you are, you’re free to compete without asking the game to give you something it was never capable of giving.

So play hard, chase excellence and be coachable. When you have a great game, enjoy it. When you have a terrible one, learn from it and get back to work. Just don’t give a stat sheet the authority to tell you what you’re worth. That was never its job.

Your worth was settled long before anybody started keeping score.

— Ashley McDonough

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