Team/Leadership/Sports Analogy by David Severy ~ 2.27.2013
As one grows older, as matures as a player, the team looks to him for more goals, more defense and more leadership, even if it simply be that he follows the leader better.
God wants faithfulness of His church, of those willing to follow His Son, of those willing and enabled to put away childish things. He looks for those who seek first the Kingdom of God, the King, to hear His Voice, and obey His Voice. Perhaps, nay surely we ought to consider Him as Coach, General Manager, Owner, Trainer and HEALER of our injuries. He is our King, our one and ONLY High Priest, He is will be our All in all one day!
A brother of mine was sitting in a worship service and the Lord told him to holler out “macaroni.” He was not easily persuaded but eventually summoned his courage and shouted out “Macaroni.” After the meeting a man came to him and thanked him saying was trying to make a difficult choice to go into one of two business ventures, and one of them was pasta. It is not your typical counseling session, but the Lord DOES move in amazing ways!
Teaching (the dispensing of knowledge and godly instructions), prophesying, healing, miracles in the church require those given these gifts to give those gifts to the body! If I have a teaching gift from God, and the gift of a specific teaching from God, the call to teach that message, and I don’t give it, then the Body in not taught or edified, and I am not obeying the Voice of God. Can one give a gift by shouting “macaroni?” If the body refuses to acknowledge my gift, and refuses to seek out that which God wants to give through me, and instead refuses the gift, me as the giver and God who gives me to the church, then the body is not edified. Can there be a greater loss? Yes, there is a greater loss, it is the loss of a soul that God might have won if the church had loosed the gift.
Am I devoted to God’s agenda? Or do I simply want to be seen by men?
Less the minds of men and more the mind of Christ. Our steps are ordered by the Lord. He even guides the steps of evil doers whose destination is hell. (Isaiah 66:4) How can we presume to be leading without being entirely devoted to following Him? Leaders must be followers. No one could teach Jesus, although as a boy He was likely taught His letters, numbers, and the scriptures. But as leaders in the Body it is our duty to allow those with gifts to give them even if we are humbled by them. Samuel eventually humbled Eli, and Saul, and Jesus at age 12 humbled the elite scholars of Jerusalem!
The importance of this leaves the idea of sports competition and winning behind when we consider that God sends to hell the unbelieving and unsaved. God must save and we must believe. No one else can save me and I cannot believe anyone else to be able to save me.
God has won the victory. War over. Let us, let me be fighting the enemy who still holds men and women in the chains of unbelief, fighting Satan with God’s help to loose those God loves from unbelief. The way to win is to obey. With man wars are won or lost when men obey their leaders. When we obey God in the Messiah we ALWAYS win! There is no competing with the devil. God never competed with him. He just cast him out of heaven, off the team.
We need to stop profaning God by unbelief. He has won. He has won me.
How much greater is the reality of Jesus as our bridegroom rather than any other team leader. Jesus left His Father to cleave to His wife, the bride, the body of Christ. And the two become one flesh!
Genesis 1
21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
22 And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
Ephesians 5
25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
28 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:
30 For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
As we fight under our Captain the Lord Jesus in His Army, we do it not by being more skilled than satan, we do it by becoming like Jesus. Jesus is Holy! Jesus is perfect! We fight and become like Jesus by turning away from sin, by turning to Him being transformed by the renewing of our minds. Satan’s mind is forever locked into disobedience. We will never be able to beat Satan by having better “sports” skills that him. We must have an entirely different skill set than satan. It is something like a 5 man basket ball team playing an 9 man baseball team. The skill set is completely different. God gives, Satan steals. God builds, Satan destroys. God heals, Satan murders. When God destroys, He destroys evil. When Satan builds he builds the construct of lying falsehood in the minds of human beings.
Nobody “loses” the superbowl. The had to “win” in so many ways to get there! Simply to play in that game shows the accomplishments of each team. In fact to be in the NFL is an accomplishment which shows a lot of ”winning”. But what is of true worth? The Silver trophy? It is an idol, and it is worshipped year by year. No one goes to heaven in baltimore because the Ravens “won” the Lombardi Idol. Even the real and bloody combat of war where men die is not the arena of “winning and losing!” It is true that men and women dying in war do go to hell. But if Satan seems to have “won” again TODAY in Afghanistan or Syria, it is because another battle is being fought which transcends those battlefields. It is in the unseen world and the unseen heavens that the battle for and against human souls is being fought. Satan seeks to keep what he “won” in Eden by his lying and deceiving ways.
In the battle we fight in God, (am I, are you IN Christ?) we win by receiving Jesus in faith, and the victory Jesus won for us on the cross becomes ours. The Father gave us freely the costliest gift and the only gift, His Son, the ransom of the lifeblood of His Unique and Only Begotten Son, the ONLY thing He could give that would redeem us, reconcile us and transform us into the likeness of God. This is not a game like football.
If there is a “competitive” aspect in this war, it is the “competition” for the minds and hearts, for the thoughts and devotions of the human soul. The lie must be exposed and banished from the mind by the TRUTH. The lie will remain until the TRUTH comes to expose it. While men draw x’s and o’s and arrows on chalk boards, men and women die and drop into hell forever. Why? Because in part, the churches are refusing the gifts! The GIVER(S) of the gifts, and the Gospel of the GIVERS, Father, Son and Holy Ghost are unheard, misheard, ignored and misunderstood! In the churches!
Otherwise why would Jesus write seven letters to the seven churches of the church age, which we call the age of grace?
Father God brought a just resolution to a crime. Satan in effect by deception stole Eve, and Adam LISTENED TO HER (whew, how little preached on that is Genesis 3:17) and went undeceived into the consequences of the deception. And today so many men are as deceived as Eve! Adam and Eve lost their fellowship, their partnership, their first estate and inheritance with God and they DIED. They were separated from God who cannot abide sin or sinners, and would have been Satan’s everlasting possession except for the truth of the Lamb slain for sinners from the foundation of the world! Now all are DEAD until Jesus give them LIFE again! Are you BORN AGAIN? "Verily, verily," Jesus says unto thee, ye MUST BE! The church has embraced being born again, and made a big mass-ive mess of it, but WE MUST BE! And we need to teach and preach John Ch. 3:1-21. Why? Because anyone in church on Sunday anywhere including those at your church will not get to heaven without being born again!
Satan is a defeated foe, he is a criminal on the loose, already guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. Though he is very busy heaping up the full weight of sin that God will permit, he is really simply awaiting arrest, and sentencing. We can experience God’s full victory over Satan by having faith in the accomplishment of His Son gifted to us by grace through our faith in Him! Satan is simply best “handled” by being made to flee into his own dark corner and made to cower their until the Great Day of his sentencing and eternal imprisonment. But if we do not push Satan into the corner, put the dunce cap on his head and silence him by the power of God, he will roar and devour even our own children.
There are sins we are commanded to flee, and ought by all means obey God and flee them. But we are not ever to flee from Satan! Satan will flee from us if we submit to God and resist him. But if we do not submit to God, we will submit eventually to Satan, for Satan has more power than those who have no authority in God! Authority in God is established by faith in Jesus even by faith in His NAME! (John 1.12)
And while all this is untaught, unstudied, and unbelieved, we think it important to ourselves redeem the false dignity of our skin tone!
Satan the author of “racism” has caught many in a false conundrum, an illusion that skin tone has merit. It has no merit in itself, it is either used as a tool of Satan to divide, or it is used by God to expose the craftiness of Satan. Are you proud of your skin tone? God is not a respecter of persons. He made you , and the color of your skin is no barrier between you and Him. BUT: PRIDE in any thing is a barrier between (YOU?) humankind and Him. Am I proud God made ME WHITE? Pride is sin.
PRIDE is the original sin, Satan is the original sinner, and all humans have sinned by the influence of that PROUD DOER!
Psalm 31:23 O love the Lord, all ye his saints: for the Lord preserveth the faithful, and plentifully rewardeth the proud doer.
At one time I read this verse and rejoiced thinking I was going to get a reward! And then years later I saw the reward for pride is nothing to rejoice over.
Proverbs 6:16 These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:
17 A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
18 An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,
19 A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.
Six of these hated things are possible without the shedding of innocent blood, yet all seven required the shedding of the only truly innocent blood ever shed! This list is perhaps the devil’s seven commandments. Number one is pride, and I’m at the point where “pride” is simply another NAME for Satan, as is “lying tongue.” The lie brings the imagination to the threshold of wickedness. If the mind deceived embraces the lie, wickedness flourishes and the feet run swiftly, the life is inflamed with sinning, lies are promulgated and discord becomes the soup de jour! This is why we have “Reverend” Jesse Jackson, “Reverend” Al Sharpton, and the Klu Klux Klan!
I find it a little ironic, and somewhat distressing that sports has done more to promote “racial harmony” than the church! Yet it is the church whose mission is in part to expose evil deeds and the doers of them! Everything in life here and now goes back to the motive of the hearts where we find the motions of sin striving against the Spirit of God.
Romans 7: 5
For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.
Motive, motivation and motion. We are either moving north to God or the enemy is dragging us south to hell. My sincere apologies to the south point of the compass.
James 4
1 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?
2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.
3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.
4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
5 Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?
6 But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.
9 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.
10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.
11 Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge.
12 There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another?
13 Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:
14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.
15 For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.
16 But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil.
17 Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.
God help those who wish to reproduce themselves instead of giving others simple courage to simply be born again in Christ and taught by God. We are very blessed to be living in an age where knowledge is on the increase. But we need to beware that knowledge can puff up, while only love will edify.
