This Is A Football

This Is A Football

Dismiss Grove KIDZ

MGCC - welcome to day 8 of the year 2023!

178 hours down... 8,582 hours still to go.

10,680 minutes down... 514,920 minutes still to go.

My point... the new year has only just begun!

YEAH – there are so many blank pages of life just waiting for you and I to fill up.

NOW TODAY – the 8th day and 2nd Sunday of the new year, I felt led to have a conversation called...

QUESTION...

• Do you want 2023 to MGCC’s best year ever?

• Do this body of believers to travel further down the road to becoming who God created us to be, than we have ever traveled before?

UNDERSTAND – like with us individually, MGCC having a great, full-filling, meaningful, God-honoring 2023 is not simply going to happen.

Instead, it will require that we: develop a plan, set some goals and then execute those plans and goals.

YEAH – that’s what I want to talk about today.

HOWEVER – before we dive in...

Let’s take two and then I will pray us into our time of study...

Prayer

Vince Lombardi is remembered as one of the greatest NFL football coaches of all time.

In fact, the Super Bowl trophy is named after him.

You know the one that the winners hold up after climbing the mountain and achieving that victory.

NOW - Lombardi was also known as a great motivator. His speech “What it Takes to be Number One” is still used in sports and in business today. In that speech he said...

"Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing. You don't win once in a while; you don't do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing…”

Lombardi was also known for his toughness. In fact, rookies and veterans alike were known to fear him.

WELL - in July 1961, the Packers gathered for the first day of training camp that year. And listen these guys were really ready to get at it.

YOU SEE - their prior season had ended in a heartbreaking loss to the Philadelphia Eagles after blowing a lead in the 4th quarter of the NFL Championship Game.

NOW - when the players came in to start training camp that year, they expected to immediately begin where they left off

AND SO - they thought that on one day that their coach would start working on ways to advance their game...

You know, learn some creative new plays and concepts that would take them over the hump and win them the championship in the new season.

HOWVER - Coach Lombardi had a different idea.

OKAY – picture the scene...

His entire team is gathered in the meeting room.

• Men (1/2 his age and early twice his size)

• Men who have been playing this game for most of their lives.

• Men who were just a fumble in the 4th qtr away from winning the championship.

I MEAN – these guys both loved and knew the game.

AND – they all were leaning in, anxiously waiting to hear about the new schemes and systems, he had worked on in the off season, to get them ready to win it all.

AND SO – with a Football in his hand, the great coach walked to the front of the room, took several seconds to look over those assembled in silence, held out the pigskin in front of him, and said, “Gentlemen, this is a football.”

NOW AFTER - holding up the football as though they had never seen one, and describing its importance...

HE THEN - had everyone open up their playbooks and start on page one, where they began to learn the fundamentals – blocking, tackling, throwing, catching, etc.

AFTER THAT – he took the team out onto the field.

He pointed out the out-of-bounds lines and the end zones.

Lombardi reminded the players that the objective was to move the football across the end zone line of their opponent, while preventing them from moving the ball across their goal line.

“Gentlemen, this is a football.”

AND UNDERSTAND - this hyper-focus on fundamentals allowed them to win the NFL Championship that season 37-0 against the New York Giants.

Lombardi would go on to give that same speech every year at the start of training for the next seven years until he retired from coaching...

THE RESULT - He never coached a team with a losing season, he never lost another playoff game again and his teams went on to win five NFL Championships in seven years.

AGAIN – the first practice of every year Lombardi would remind his team, and stress the importance of the fundamentals of the game.