Leave It All On The Field

Title: Leave it all on the Field

Show the video clip… found at http://www.sermoncentralstore.com/ProductInfo.aspx?CategoryID=0&productid=VI1406467&

Introduction

This is “Football Friday Night”! I thought it would be good to open with that particular clip, just to set the stage for the message.

How many of you have ever seen the death crawl?

How many of you have ever done the death crawl?

That clip, by the way, is from a brand new movie called “Facing the Giants,” and will be coming out September 29th.

How many football players do we have here tonight?

How many armchair quarterbacks?

One thing that you hear a lot and see fleshed-out a lot in the game of football is the element of “leaving it all on the field.” If you are going to win, you have to leave it all on the field.

It is that way in football, and it is that way in life as we serve the Lord.

Tonight I will be sharing some things with you that have been given to us by a sports fanatic. This guy really loved sports. He loved them so much that he used analogies often in his letters. That man is the Apostle Paul, and I think Paul would have loved football. I and see Paul being a sanctified version of the great Woody Hayes.

Anyway, let’s see if we can’t apply Paul’s coaching style to what we have just seen.

In the clip, we heard the coach say, “Give me some heart!” That is a great phrase. Paul wrote to the believers in Colosse, and said, “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men”, Col 3:23 NASB. That word heartily literally means “from the soul.”

After the death crawl, and the team takes a break, one of the players asks, “So coach, how strong is Westview (one of their rivals) this year?”

So, then Brock answers, “Stronger than we are.” What a picture of our rival, our adversary. Scripture says, in (1Pe 5:8), “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”

So the coach asks, “Have you wrote Friday night off as a “loss” Brock.”

To which Brock responds, “Not if I knew we could beat them.”

[BTW, if you have accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, I can guarantee without any reservation that YOU are on the winning team!]

Next the coach gets Brock to step up, and asks another player to join him.

C: “I want to see you do the death crawl again, but I want to see your absolute best.”

: “What, do you want me to go to the 30?”

C: “I think you can go to the 50.”

B: “I can do it with no one on my back.”

C: “I think you can do it with Jeremy on your back. But even if you can’t, I want you to promise me that will your best.”

B: “Alright.” [Kind of half-hearted]

C: “Your best?”

B: “Okay.”

C: “You’re gonna give me your best?”

B: “I’m gonna give you my best!”

C: “Don’t quit until you’ve got nothing left.”

The coach asks a simple question – one that every athlete has been asked at some point in his or her playing career – “Are you gonna give me your best?”

And the reason that we cannot see all of the reasons why we have to endure grueling circumstances as we live for Jesus, is so that we do not quit when we could go farther.

The burden is great sometimes, just like Brock doing the death crawl. Jesus said in that we must willingly take up our cross – our willingness to serve Him with every fiber of our being – daily and follow Him. It is grueling sometimes. It seems impossible to live for Him and keep our integrity. It is hard to live a pure life, to remain sexually pure . It is sometimes agonizing to pursue our relationship with Jesus without losing friends and face with our peers. But Jesus is cheering you. Others are cheering you.

God’s Word tells us in the book of Hebrews, “Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Heb 12: 1-2)

And as we run, we must remember that it takes everything we have in us. AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.’ (Mar 12:30)