Picking Up Yardage
February 7, 2010
by Alan Cornett
More avocadoes are used over the weekend of the Super Bowl than any other time of the year. It’s a sensible choice—what better thing to have than guacamole as you watch your favorite team try to win the biggest game of the year?
We all love to see the big plays: kickoffs or interceptions returned for a touchdown, perhaps. But while they are exciting, that’s not the norm. Football games can be slow. In fact, a recent study showed that the average NFL football game had all of 11 minutes of action—for the whole game! It’s even worse when compared to the forty five minutes of advertising that were aired during last year’s Super Bowl.
Those big plays only happen as a result of practice, and very often as a result of an even plodding approach to moving the football. When you see a spectacular pass downfield or a runner cut through a massive hole in the defense you think, “Now why don’t they do that every time?” But there are likely plays upon plays that didn’t go anywhere that set up the situation to make the big play possible.
Sometimes our spiritual progress can be a bit like that. We all long for the big play—a sudden, new insight into a passage, making a contact to share the gospel, a sense of contentment in our lives. But we’ll never have that new insight without being a regular student of the Bible. The Bereans searched the Scripture daily (Acts 17:11) More people will show no interest in the gospel than will be eager to hear, but with persistence someone will listen. Paul was mocked at Athens, but some were eager to hear (Acts 17:32). We all deal with a lot of stress, sometimes leading to outright worry. While we all desire contentment and the “peace that passes understanding” it’s not automatic. It can be ours, but we have to be consistent in our prayer and trust. Paul even said he “learned” to be content (Philippians 4:4-13). We can learn, too, but not without running a lot of plays that don’t seem to go anywhere.
Progress is always slower than we like. We all want what we want…yesterday. But the mature football team knows that you can’t hurry, you can’t rush, you can’t achieve in moments what takes a series of plays, a quarter or an entire game to accomplish. Sometimes a team can get quickly behind, things go wrong and the inclination is to panic. But the wise team sticks to the game plan, runs the next play, even if that particular play picks up little yardage.
Satan may be trying to cause panic in your life to throw you off your spiritual game. There’s no doubt he’s trying to stop you from gaining spiritual yardage. But if you trust in God you’ll know that what you need to do is run the next play. God has drawn up the perfect way to advance to Him. Trusting in His guidance will guarantee your spiritual success.