Twister Series

Games People Play

Pt. 2 - Twister

I. Introduction

Back in 1965, Reyn Guyer was running a sales promotion firm he had founded with his father and came up with a concept to sale shoes but then it occurred to him that what he had come up with might work better as a game.

He called on one of the company’s artists, who sketched out a giant board, then tested it out with a group of office workers divided into two teams.

Seeing the fun in eight people-as-playing pieces crammed on a 4x6 mat, a number of concepts emerged, eventually evolving into a game they called "Pretzel".

Pretzel was picked up by the Milton Bradley company, who, against Guyer’s wishes, changed the name to Twister.

But even with the name change, the game still had trouble once it got to market -- major retailers balked, not sure where it fit in or if customers would understand it. Company fears that they might have a huge flop on their hands vanished, however, on May 3, 1966, when Twister was featured on ’The Tonight Show’. Helping matters was the fact that one of Johnny Carson’s guests that night was Eva Gabor (the lady who plays “Lisa” from Green Acres). All it took was one shot of Eva on her hands and knees, with Johnny climbing over her, and no longer was there any doubt what this game was all about. Further proof: during that first year alone, more than three million copies were sold. Conservative estimates are that Twister has been played by 65 million people worldwide.

The premise of the game is simple. Spin the spinner and the place the proper hand or foot on the proper color. But if you’ve ever played the game, you know that what sounds so simple actually becomes extremely difficult.

Remember we said last week that relationship management is life management. Relationships are the single most influencing and impacting factor in our lives. You can't escape them. You must learn to navigate them. Jesus came to not only teach us spiritual lessons, but He also modeled for us relationship management and intelligence.

Twister is the perfect launching pad to talk about relationships. There are many lessons we could apply from the game. I want to just mention a couple and then dive a little deeper on one. This game certainly could be used to talk about the need to stretch in relationships. I have talked about that a good bit, so I won't camp here. It could be used to address the need for flexibility in relationships. If you don't know that relationships require flexibility, then you must live in total isolation and you certainly aren't married. Healthy relationships require compromise and flexibility. If we are always rigid, then we will leave a path of broken relationships behind us.

But as I began to think about it, I realized that although Twister does require stretching and flexibility you can be the most stretchy and flexible in the game and still lose. The number one trait needed in Twister and one that I think most of us are missing in relationship management is balance. In Twister and in relationships we often feel pulled in 100 different directions. The issue is that you can only be pulled in so many different directions before you fall. Therefore, you must learn balance.

For those of you who are car buffs you know that balance is achieved through alignment. That is true in Twister too. If you can keep everything aligned so that your center of gravity is maintained, then you will stay balanced. Jesus, on more than one occasions, modeled for us balance. I want to point you to one example and challenge you to dig into the Gospels and find other examples as well. We need to learn balance that is achieved through alignment from Jesus.

Text: Luke 6:12-13, 17-19 (NLT)

One day soon afterward Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night. At daybreak he called together all of his disciples and chose twelve of them to be apostles.

When they came down from the mountain, the disciples stood with Jesus on a large, level area, surrounded by many of his followers and by the crowds. There were people from all over Judea and from Jerusalem and from as far north as the seacoasts of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those troubled by evil spirits were healed. Everyone tried to touch him, because healing power went out from him, and he healed everyone.

I chose this passage out of the others simply because in the matter of a few verses Jesus models for us balance.

Notice the alignment of His life.