Starting Right
Starting Right is a 5 minute Day Starter to help keep you motivated, encouraged, and focused throughout your day. DannyMac is a pastor, teacher, motivational speaker, husband, and father. His years of leading and training people have given him vast experience in helping individuals to accomplish change in their lives and meet their goals. He can help you set the course for your day by offering practical advice from God's Word in a positive and fun way. There is no better way to begin your day than by Starting Right with DannyMac.
Starting Right
Life Lesson From a Football Failure
We all need confidence but what if your confidence was sabotaging your success? Join me, Danny Mac, as we kick off your day with a captivating story from the world of American College football that highlights the pitfalls and dangers of pride. Imagine a wide-open receiver, just steps away from a touchdown, who fumbles it all by celebrating too soon. This episode is more than just a recount of a sports blunder; it's an exploration of pride as a spiritual roadblock, echoing C.S. Lewis's insightful words and drawing parallels with the Biblical tale of the Pharisee and the tax collector.
We'll unravel the lessons from three compelling characters—the boastful football player, the self-righteous Pharisee, and the humble tax collector. Ponder with us on how these stories urge introspection and honest self-assessment, as advised by Paul in Romans 12:3. Grab your morning coffee, sit back, and let's unlock the secrets to staying grounded and true to ourselves.
Good morning and welcome to Starting Right with Danny Mac. I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great five-minute start to your day. So grab your cup of coffee, sit back, relax and let me help you start your day right. One of my favorite things to do when I have some time is to watch football. I'm talking North American football here, not what the rest of the world knows as football. The North American game is very different, but in the United States it is hugely popular. I'm not in the States, but I love it as well. I love watching very good teams compete against each other. It's exciting to see what they do and how they play. The caliber of the professional football is astounding, but very close to that is the caliber of football played in the American universities. This college football is wonderful to watch and I do have my favorite teams.
Speaker 1:One of the things that the sports television stations do here is, at the end of every month, they run a blooper reel. This is a place where they showcase the foolish mistakes made by professional or college-level players that really shouldn't have happened, things like missing a wide-open goal or dropping a ball, or running into your own player and falling down, and sometimes they're quite funny. It wasn't too long ago I saw one of the bloopers that showcased a game between two major American universities. The quarterback for one team stepped back and threw the ball down the sidelines to one of his wide-open receivers, who caught it with no defender anywhere near him, and he ran easily and lazily towards the end zone. As he got closer and closer to the end zone, he began to wave to the crowd and he actually threw them a kiss. He could tell he was pretty happy about it all, except that before he actually crossed the goal line, he dropped the ball, thinking that he had already scored. He proceeded then to face away from the field and to dance before the crowd, celebrating what he thought was his touchdown. Now, because he dropped the ball before it crossed the goal line, it was not a touchdown, and one of the players from the other team who were chasing him picked up that ball and ran halfway back down the field before they were stopped. Meanwhile, the first man continued to dance in the end zone, celebrating, oblivious to the fact that he hadn't scored at all. In our part of the world, if someone does that, we call it showboating and it is just an exaggerated way to say look at me and how great I am.
Speaker 1:Cs Lewis once said, for pride is a spiritual cancer. It eats up the very possibility of love or contentment or even common sense. In Luke 18, jesus describes two men at the temple praying. One was a Pharisee, one was a tax collector. The Pharisee, who was a religious leader, said I thank God that I am not a sinner like other people around me. The tax collector, on the other hand, lamented his sins with regret to God and to the astonishment of the listeners. Jesus says it is the tax collector who is justified before God and not the Pharisee. Those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
Speaker 1:That football player in the story thought he was pretty hot stuff, that he had caught the ball, that he had made the touchdown, that everything was great. What he didn't realize is that he made a mistake along the way. He did not score and in fact the other team recovered the ball and were well on their way to go back down the field in the other direction. The Pharisee who prayed before the temple wanted everybody to see and hear how great and wonderful he was for his own humility, that he was humble and holy, and, above all, other men. Well, the man who was the tax collector, who was very much considered to be an outcast, prayed humbly before God and said Lord, this is who I am, forgive me, Help me.
Speaker 1:There are lessons for us in all three of these people the football player, the Pharisee and the tax collector. And that lesson is found in Romans, chapter 12 and verse 3, where Paul writes and says I give each of you this warning Don't think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us. Let's make sure that we measure ourselves based upon who God says we are and the faith that he's given us, and not based upon what we've accomplished or how smart or good we think we really are. But let our view of ourselves be as God sees us.
Speaker 1:And how does God see us? Well, the Bible tells us that God sees us as His beloved children, and when he looks at us, he doesn't see our imperfections or our weaknesses. He sees us as whole and holy before Him because of what Christ has done for us. He always loves us, he always accepts us. We may not have experienced everything God is going to do through our lives, but we do know what the Bible tells us about how he sees us and to Him we are perfect. So as you start your day, god's looking at you right now and he says to you you are perfect and I love you. I hope you have a great day. My friends, we'll talk again tomorrow. Thank you for listening today and I invite you to join me Monday to Friday, right here on Starting Right, with Danny Mac.
