From Theory to Action, Part 3

(FROM THEORY TO ACTION, Part 1 http://ow.ly/bjvIq
FROM THEORY TO ACTION, Part 2 http://ow.ly/bjvJV )

By:  Staci Stallings

In the previous two posts, we talked about a basketball team that listened to the coach tell them how to play for an hour a week but never practiced.  In Part 2, we then considered a team that actually practiced what the coach taught them.

Now we are moving from theory (the coach’s game plan) through practice and into action.

Why do we practice?  Do we practice for the sake of practice?  Or do we practice so we can actually play the game?

Why does a kid who is only going to be a bench-warmer practice?  Because maybe, if he practices enough and gets good enough, at some point, he will get to be in the game.  In fact, my dad who was a baseball coach for about 10 years once shared a study with me that they had determined it took 500 practice swings with a new habit to break an old habit.  But it took a full 1,500 practice swings for it to “just be you.”

1,500 practice opportunities at forgiveness, at kindness, at having hope when all looks lost, at being at peace in the midst of the storm.  1,500!

So, how do you tell the difference between practice and the game?  Practice is always about you.  The game is when God starts sending people to you so you can help them.

Now, here’s where our basketball analogy breaks down a little bit.

In basketball, the coach can have the most brilliant game plan ever.  In fact, the coach could be an awesome player himself, but in basketball, the coach can’t play the game for you.  He can give you the plays, help you practice, correct your skills, but when the game starts, he doesn’t get to go in for you.

In life, with God, everything that has gone before the game has been focused on one goal… to teach you to let Him play for you and through you!

God doesn’t give you a great game plan and help you practice so you can do it.  His game plan consists of one thing:  Let Me do it for you and through you.

Every practice opportunity you get is focused on one lesson:  Let go and trust Me to do it through you.  Breathe.  Rest.  Rejoice in My strength. Say what I give you to say.  Take the step I’m asking you to take.  TRUST ME!

I just talked to a friend of mine who recently started playing the game.  For a very long time now, she’s been practicing.  And practicing hasn’t been all that easy.  Like all of us, she had some very bad programming about doing things for God and needing to be perfect and feeling unlovable.  And like all of us, she has to practice every day.  But recently, something shifted because God started sending her “divine assignments” in droves.

These are people who REALLY need God to show up in their lives.  At first, she was blown away.  Why would these people be coming to her?!  She didn’t have all the answers!  So I told her that God doesn’t expect her to do it.  He just knows that she will breathe and let Him do it through her.  She’s in the game.

I have several people that I’ve worked very closely with who have or are now making that jump, experiencing that moment when the Coach looks down the bench and says, “It’s time for you to get in the game!”

So, whether you’re in the practicing stage or the in the game stage, remember:  sitting and listening to the Game Plan is not enough.  It’s time to take theory and start putting it into action by practicing it, and then, when God knows you are ready to let Him do it, you will enter the game.  The cool thing is that Satan cannot defeat you as long as you are relying on God.  So the victory is already yours!

How cool it that?

*~*

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From Theory to Action, Part 2

(See Part 1:  http://ow.ly/bjvIq )

By:  Staci Stallings

In the first part of this series, I told you about this basketball team who only came and listened about to how to play the game once a week.  They never set foot on the court to practice, never held the ball, never practiced shooting or defending.  And we decided that a team doing it this way is going to lose and lose BADLY.

As I thought about the “in theory” part, I had to remember the scene in “Miracle” (the movie about the 1980 U.S. Hockey Team who eventually won the gold medal).  The scene is one in which their coach is trying to show them a new way to play hockey.  Prior to this each player had a box they stayed in, and they were getting killed playing that way.  So his idea was to make the whole game more fluid, where each player had a zone (if you know about hockey, don’t kill me if I have this wrong–that’s what I got out of it).

But in the scene, the coach is explaining this new way to play, and he’s all animated drawing with lines and arches and squiggly lines as the players look on baffled.  Suddenly, he says (paraphrase), “And that’s how we’re going to do it.  Let’s go.”  He skates away, leaving the team all standing there, staring at this “diagram” in complete incomprehension!  It was hilarious.

You see, there comes a time that just listening to God’s Plan for an hour in church just doesn’t cut it anymore.  While it’s important to understand the philosophy and the game plan, knowing only that will not get you very far. You can’t just listen and think you have it anymore than a basketball team can listen to a coach diagram plays and think they can do it.

There comes a time when you have to PRACTICE what you’ve heard.

You take the theory, and you practice it.  You get the ball in your hands, and you shoot–a lot–if you want to get good at it.  You face off with someone else who has the ball, and you defend.  You do drills and run plays.  You memorize plays.  You play together.  You pass.  You catch. Other people play against you so you can sharpen your skills.

This is not for fun.  It is so you can get good enough to play a real game!

The problem that Casting Crowns highlights in “The Altar and the Door,” is that far too many of us, hear the theory and never bother to practice anything we’ve heard!  We hear about forgiveness but never practice it.  We hear about trusting God, but we don’t practice it.

And when we don’t practice it on the little things, we’re no better off that than team who steps onto the court to face an opponent without ever having touched a basketball!

Just how effective do we think we can be at working God’s Plan if we never practice?

Come on!

Are we really that naive?

Because let me tell you, Satan is a serious opponent on the court of life.  He plays for keeps.  And if you’re not in practice, you will be destroyed.

God is giving you the Game Plan.  And then He graciously gives you opportunities to practice the Game Plan.

Practice happens in those little moments–when someone cuts you off on the highway.  Ding.  An opportunity to practice patience and forgiveness.  When the waiter takes a little longer than usual to bring out your drinks.  When the person who promised to be there at a certain time is late.  When you want to lie “just this one time” because it sounds easier…

Understand, these are not tests.  They are practice.

What are you doing with these little practice opportunities?

Do you practice what you’ve heard?  If not, you’re missing the point altogether.

God’s Plan is about LIVING it, not just hearing it.

My daughter has a saying, “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.”

What makes you a Christian is PRACTICING what you’ve heard in church!

(Watch for Part 3 of this series coming next week!)

*~*

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From Theory to Action, Part 1

By:  Staci Stallings

The other night I was listening to the Casting Crowns song “The Altar and the Door.”  In the song, the person talks about how they go to church, hear the sermon, sing the songs, etc., but the message doesn’t last in their heart when they leave the church.

Although there are many issues in the church, I think this is the biggest.  If we could handle this one issue, most if not all of the others would be alleviated.

So, what’s the issue?

It’s that far too many of us go to church, sit in the pew for an hour, listen to the readings and the sermon, and then get up and walk out having not been changed one iota by any of it.  Oh, it all sounds good in theory.  That whole “love your neighbor” stuff?  Yeah.  Okay.  But then we go home and yell at our kids, nit-pick our spouse, run our co-workers into the ground, gossip about the boss, criticize our company management, snip at the store clerk, gossip about our friends, run down other Christians…

What’s going on here?  Why do we listen but not hear?

Well, as I was driving and listening to this song, a clear picture of a basketball court came into my mind.  I have learned that most if not all spiritual lessons have some physical representation in our world.  So although basketball doesn’t seem to have any direct correlation with spirituality, there was something there to look at.

As I considered the question further, I realized that much like a basketball team, practice is important.  You cannot become a good shooter by shooting once in a pressure-packed game.  Sure, you might get lucky, but you are far more likely to miss by a mile.

The same is true with practicing your faith.

But then I realized that there is at least one step BEFORE you ever even get into practicing for a basketball team.  That step involves coaching and learning the plays.

Before kids ever step onto a court to play as a team in a school setting, the coach has to have already planned out the TEAM strategy.

Now maybe you don’t know a lot about basketball.  I never played, but I grew up in a town that “going to State” became our Spring Break because either the boys’ team or the girls’ team, and in quite a few years BOTH teams, made it to the State Championship.  In fact, when we built a new gym, they only brought the State trophies over because the others would never have fit in the copious trophy cases.

Suffice it to say, I know basketball.

I know that every coach has a different philosophy.  I’ve seen “run and gun” where the guys just run up and down the court, firing the ball from one end to the other trying to score and exhaust the other team.  I’ve seen stall if you have the lead.  So if you are leading, you take the ball down and hold it (very boring!).  I’ve seen zone defense, man defense, and press defense.  And although I couldn’t tell you exact names for plays, I recognize that there’s nothing haphazard to the way a team plays.  It has all been thought out and planned by the coach far in advance of the team ever stepping onto the court to face an actual opponent.

Great, but what does this have to do with religion and spirituality?

Well, pretty much everything.

Let’s say that we have a team, and their coach’s game philosophy is a combination of run-and-gun on offense and man defense.  Let’s further say that the coach spends the entire practice time, going over plays on the board.  That means the team never actually put sneakers to the hardwoods.  They never step onto the actual court. They never pick up an actual ball.  Oh, they hear a lot about basketball, but it’s all in theory.

Instead of practicing, the coach stands at the front of the room going, “Now, when they press, I want Greg to take it down low into the corner, then bounce pass it to Jake underneath….”  All with very interesting little squiggly lines and O’s and even X’s!  And that’s what the team does, once a week for an hour.

How good is that team going to be against their first opponent?

No.  Really.  I want an out loud answer to that.  How good are they going to be?  How well will the coach’s theory work?  Will the team members know where to go?  Will they know how to shoot or how to play defense?  Remember, all they’ve done is heard and seen the game plan.

Yeah.  I’m with you.  They are going to totally get slaughtered in that first game!

So, why do we play the “game” of life and expect any different?

(FROM THEORY TO ACTION, Part 2 http://ow.ly/bjvJV )

*~*

 

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Being Michael Jordan

By:  Staci Stallings

My husband heard on the radio this morning how much Michael Jordan makes, and it’s some astronomical amount like $176,000 a day… something like that.  Of course my hardworking husband thought that was a pretty cushy set-up.  Then I launched into (hat-tip to Paul Harvey) “the REST of the STORY.”

You see, what they probably failed to mention on that radio broadcast was how Michael Jordan did not make the basketball team at his high school when he was a sophomore.  The coach thought he was too little and not tall enough.  Michael begged the coach to let him play, but all the coach would offer was for him to be the towel boy, which Micheal accepted.  But the coach also said that he got to the school at like six in the morning, and practice didn’t start until seven.  So if Michael wanted to come and practice before practice, he could.

Now, here is why Michael Jordan makes $176,000 a day.  He got up and went to that gym every single morning because he wanted to make his high school team. He did not go thinking he was going to make $176,000 a day someday.  No.  He wanted to play basketball on a real team with a real coach.  So he got up, and he went for an hour every morning to do drills and shoot.

The thing is, from what I’ve read, when he made the team, he didn’t stop.  He was usually the first guy there and the last to leave.  I read somewhere that he would stand in one spot and make like 10 or 20 in a row from that spot before he moved to another spot.

I also read somewhere how many last second-shots he missed as a pro, and it was a LOT.  But he kept practicing and kept working and never gave up even at the buzzer–even if he wasn’t successful 100% of the time.

I saw a kid the other day who will probably be a major league baseball player someday.  He had this attitude as well.  The quote I remember him saying is, “Practice doesn’t make you perfect, but it always makes you better.”

That’s what Michael Jordan did.  He practiced, hundreds of thousands of hours of practice.

However, he did one other thing that makes him so much money now–even though he no longer plays basketball.  He kept his reputation clean.

I believe Tiger Woods had the same singular focus on practice and being at the top of his game, but he let the fame go to his head.  He made some very bad personal decisions, and because of those decisions, he will never make the kind of money he would have made had he kept the main thing (being a good and upright person) the main thing.

I don’t know what your calling is.  I don’t know what you love to do.  But I can tell you like I told a writing buddy of mine the other day, “If you want to get good at writing, WRITE.  Practice.  Do it. You don’t learn to play the piano by reading books about playing the piano.  You learn by doing it!”

What do you want to get good at?  It may not make you $176,000 a day, but then again, Micheal Jordan didn’t know that kind of payoff would come if he put his all into the thing that he loved, so who knows?

Vitally Important Pieces

By:  Staci Stallings

If you’ve ever watched basketball, I’m betting you never said, “Wow! Look how important the little pinky is to everything the players can do!”  I sure never did–until last Friday.  My middle daughter played her first fourth grade game.  She played a grand total of 7:24.  That’s one quarter plus 1:24 in the second quarter.  And she was good.  Very good.  She could dribble with both hands, switch off, fake out.  She was fun to watch.  And then, 7 minutes and 24 seconds into her basketball career, she got caught in traffic, someone pushed, she tripped.  At first I thought it was a knee, and it was.  But even after her knee looked better as she sat on the bench with her dad, she didn’t go in.  After the game, I found out why.

Her little finger.

Now really.  I’ve never once thought about a little finger being of supreme importance in a basketball career.  Good legs, quick hands–yes.  Little finger?  Not so much.  But let me tell you, you can’t do anything with a little finger injury!  You can’t pass.  You can’t shoot.  You can’t dribble.  You can’t catch a pass.  You can’t even play defense very well if you’re trying to protect the thing.

So she sat out the game the next day.  We soaked it.  We popcicle-sticked it.  We wrapped it.  In two days it was feeling better (I think she had pregnancy amnesia.  You know, when you want another child SOOOOO bad that you somehow develop amnesia about how bad the prior pregnancy was… Something like that.  Because she convinced herself she was going to play.)  We tested it out, and being the mother who doesn’t want to coddle and baby her children if they don’t want to be, I let her play.

And she did.  Hurt finger and all… for one half of a game.  Twelve minutes. She dribbled with both hands, passed, and even shot, got fouled, and had to shoot two free-throws.  But it was clear the finger was hurting.  So they took her out at half-time.  Then another girl on the team got hurt, and with only six, they needed my daughter once again.  So she went in for 45 seconds.  Then she picked up a dribble and the player for the other team grabbed it, a fight for the ball ensued, and when the ref finally got them to hear the whistle, all I heard was my daughter screaming in pain.

That was, in all likelihood, the end of her basketball career.

Three doctor visits later, it was determined that she mostly likely fractured the growth plate at the base of her little finger.  She’s out four weeks–the length of the season, to which she said, “That’s really okay, Mom.  I would be afraid to go out there again.  I don’t want to get hurt again.”

Now this may sound like a rant, so you can take it or leave it–but when did children’s sports become a blood-bath?  We played three basketball games.  Fourth grade GIRLS, and TWO of our 7 players are now making the doctor rounds with X-rays and MRIs.  And it’s not just us.  I went and watched 7th and 8th grade boys play a week ago.  By the end of two games, they had destroyed three pairs of glasses and two ankles.  How is this even fun?

I know it is for some kids, but for the majority, what’s the point?  Are we teaching our kids that taking out the opposing team is not just okay but the point of the game?

Worse, I think this applies not just to basketball but to the way too many now are “playing” life.  They teach their kids to do “whatever it takes to win.”  The problem is, like my daughter’s pinky, these children–our children are vitally important pieces of the puzzle–OUR puzzle.  God’s puzzle.  And so are each one of us.

Are you playing life making the vitally important pieces vitally important?  If not, maybe it’s now time to start.