One fall afternoon at a little league football game, a young boy named Josh was playing defense. He was really good at his job of tackling the quarterback. Too good. The other team double teamed Josh, and he was still getting through. One of the blockers was obviously getting frustrated and on the next play he grabbed Josh’s face-mask and took him down. If you know anything about football, you know that grabbing a face-mask is not only against the rules but dangerous. Josh was angry. He ran over and told his coach what happened, and the coach calmed him down and said “Josh, don’t worry, the ref will catch it next time.”
On the next play, the offensive lineman did the very same thing. He grabbed Josh’s face-mask and threw him down... still no call from the ref. Josh was furious! He ran back to the sideline and asked the coach what to do... same response from Coach. “Josh, just keep doing your job, the ref will call it.” Josh was more than visibly agitated at this time, and as he ran back on the field he told the ref that he better be watching number 77 because the offensive lineman keeps grabbing his face-mask.
Before the next play was run, Josh’s dad said to the coach, “I’ve seen that look before; this isn’t going to go well.” Sure thing, during the next play, the offensive lineman went to grab Josh’s face-mask, but this time Josh was more than ready for his revenge. He picked number 77 up and dropped him on the field, not legal. Then he proceeded to grab the kid’s pads and drive him into the field over and over again, definitely not legal! You can believe that the ref caught that one. The worst part of all, was that if Josh would have look up for a second, and not focused solely on his revenge, he would have seen that the quarterback was only 2 feet away!! The prize, the goal, the whole reason Josh was there was so close but he was so focused on revenge and blinded to the fact that his prize was so close.
Don’t we do this all the time? Our prize is Jesus and God is our referee. God doesn’t always make the call right away, but it’s His timing. Sometimes he lets things happen to build our character. Sometimes it’s to build theirs. And sometimes we have no idea why he doesn't make the call right away. Often we tend to focus all our time on something that is just in our way of Jesus -- our prize. We focus on the road block and get caught up with moving the entire road block in stead of going around it and focusing on the goal destination ahead.
Philippians 3:12-14- 12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Reflection Question: Where are you trying to get revenge that is blocking you from seeing the prize?
Story borrowed with permission from Charles Martin
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