Holt loves to play baseball,\u00a0and he’s played for many coaches throughout the years. Once when\u00a0he was playing on a traveling baseball team, he played\u00a0for a coach who truly believed that “Winning\u00a0is everything.”\u00a0 After a long weekend of playing in a tournament, Holt’s team finished a little short and got second place. I think only a couple of runs made the difference in the championship game as it came down to\u00a0the final inning. All the boys really tried to do their best but just couldn’t pull it out. After the trophies were handed out, the coach of his team said, “Boys, I can tell you what to do with your second place trophy. You can take it and play Pepper with it because\u00a0that’s all it’s good for!” In other words he was saying, “That\u00a0second place trophy is good for nothing but smashing into pieces; you guys didn’t win and that’s all that matters.”<\/p>\n
That incident made me mad years ago when it happened, but it even bothers me more today.\u00a0The sad thing is that\u00a0a lot of people have this same type of mentality. If you don’t win and finish first, you are a loser. The world\u00a0tells us that\u00a0“Winning\u00a0is everything” and so many\u00a0believe it.<\/p>\n
As I sat in church this morning, I could see my younger son sitting a few rows in front of me.\u00a0During one of the songs, I\u00a0looked at him\u00a0and started thinking about what I want for him in\u00a0life. \u00a0I want him to be a man who loves Jesus more than anything and obeys His Word. I want him to find God’s purpose for his life… whatever that might be. I want him to be a Christian example for his classmates, friends, and\u00a0others. Someday I want him to be a devoted husband\u00a0and a loving father who teaches his children about Jesus. I want him to be happy and healthy. I want him to never really <\/em>die but live forever with God\u00a0and our\u00a0loved ones\u00a0in heaven.\u00a0Not that I am a perfect parent by any means, but NOTHING that entered my mind at that moment had anything to do with any sport that he plays, a championship title, popularity, making perfect grades, getting a particular job, making a lot of money,\u00a0or having a position of power.\u00a0 In the world’s view, the things I\u00a0want for\u00a0him\u00a0don’t sound much like success, yet everything I thought about had to do with\u00a0God’s view of\u00a0winning.<\/p>\n The Bible says in Acts 20:24, “However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me- the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.” It\u00a0seems like we think we are all running a race against\u00a0one other or maybe another team, but in actuality\u00a0we are each running our own\u00a0individual race. God has given each\u00a0person a special task or purpose, and winning means that we are completing that task and giving\u00a0Him our award. Asking that God’s name be written on the\u00a0trophy rather than our own.<\/p>\n Many of the trophies that we work so hard to win in life are worthless to God because they have nothing to do with the task that He has given us to do. The sad truth is that there are trophies in\u00a0cases all over this world that God could use\u00a0to play\u00a0Pepper\u00a0with if He wanted to. I pray God helps me keep His view of winning and not be persuaded by the world. Anything less than fulfilling God’s purpose for your life truly is losing…..no matter what the scoreboard says.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Holt loves to play baseball,\u00a0and he’s played for many coaches throughout the years. Once when\u00a0he was playing on a traveling baseball team, he played\u00a0for a coach who truly believed that “Winning\u00a0is everything.”\u00a0 After a long weekend of playing in a tournament, Holt’s team finished a little short and got second place. I think only a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kims-blogs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theholtrowlandfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theholtrowlandfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theholtrowlandfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theholtrowlandfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theholtrowlandfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/theholtrowlandfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":294,"href":"https:\/\/theholtrowlandfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions\/294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theholtrowlandfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theholtrowlandfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theholtrowlandfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}