Lay it down

It's Saturday night... and as I was contemplating on what to blog about tonight, the idea came to me that I wanted to share a little bit about what we talked about at our team retreat this weekend.

Three of our coaches had the opportunity to share with us this past weekend.

First, Coach LaPhonso Ellis shared with us Friday night. He shared a bit of his testimony with us and it was super cool to hear how God has worked in his life and has had such a huge role. He really opened up to us and it meant a lot to us that he was willing to do so. His message for us is that we need to really 'lay-it-down' for one another. Now where does that come from? It comes from 1 John 3:16-17 which says: "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our bothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?" Those two verses are awesome. Jesus Christ showed us what love truly is by laying down his life for us. Phonz had a really awesome example about 'laying-it-down.' Phonz told us about the NBA playoffs in 1994 when his team, the Denver Nuggets, an 8 seed, defeated the Seattle SuperSonics, a 1 seed. To this day, the Nuggets are the only 8 seed to defeat a 1 seed in the NBA playoffs. He talked about that final game, game 5, when the series was tied 2-2. He talked about the mood in the locker room before that game, he said there was a vibe that everyone was going to do whatever it took for the Nuggets to win that game. They didn't care who got the credit, they were going to 'lay-it-down' for one another.

Later on that night, Coach Ryne Lightfoot gave a message about how two are better that one. Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 says: "Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up." We had a great discussion after that, and we talked about how in order for us to be successful we are all going to have to have each others backs. You cannot be successful alone. If you fall down or fail you will never have anyone to pick you up. Ryne also talked about purpose. He asked us a series of questions about our purpose and if we knew what our purpose was yet. He bought us these purpose bracelets so that whenever we reach out to grab something or doing something we see that on our wrists and remember that we have a purpose in whatever we do. This afternoon Ryne spoke to us again about the 'process' and what we define the 'process' as. It was super cool to hear a lot of my teammates opinions on that topic. One thing he said during that stuck out to me a lot. Ryne was telling us about a canoeing trip he went on when he was at Bethel. He told us how it was a 5 mile trip, but along the way, there were sand dunes, cliffs to jump off of and a bunch of fun things like that. He told us how him and his partner enjoyed doing all of those things more than actually reaching the end of the 5 miles. He defined that as the process and talked about how a huge part of the process is actually enjoying all of the things between your beginning and end result. How great is that? The grind is fun. The process is fun. I am so thankful he was able to share bits and pieces of wisdom like that to us. Another thing he encouraged us with was to have a heart of exploration. Interpret that however you want. It can mean many things.

Lastly, Coach Andrew Wingreen shared with us this morning after breakfast. Coach Wingreen shared Ephesians 4 and talked about taking off the old self and putting on the new self. He then gave us some time to sit and think about all of the things that consist of our old self, that was a little bit awkward but it was an interesting thing to think about. He finished by sharing a video from Judah Smith. I had no idea what to expect from this video, but man was it powerful. The video was how Jesus loves Barabbas. Some of you are probably thinking, who in the world is that? Barabbas is the man who was tried with Jesus. He was the criminal/thug that the people wanted saved rather than Jesus. Now whenever I hear that story I used to always have a sour taste in my mouth about Barabbas because he was chosen over Jesus. This video was about how we are Barabbas. We are the sinners and Jesus was crucified for him and all of us. Take away Barabbas...are we even here today? There was one thing that really stuck out to me in that video and it was a quote that said; "The greatest challenge is believing the gospel." Why is that so significant? I think that every single day we categorize our challenges. For me, on Friday was our final day of conditioning and I knew we had to run 5, 17 agains and I knew that it was going to be tough. I made that my greatest challenge of the day. That is so stupid of me. Our greatest challenge is believing the gospel. I almost think remembering it is just as big of a challenge. We simply forget that we aren't in control of our lives, God is. In every single part of your life, your challenges are specific daily tasks, our challenges are remembering who is in charge of all of those things and who gives us the strength every single day to do this life. I apologize if that last part was wordy, but its so important. If you took away anything from those last couple of sentences, I hope that you know that Jesus is enough. Jesus is all you need.

I hope you guys can take away a little something from what these three coaches had to say this weekend to us. I am so thankful to be a part of the Bethel Basketball Family and to have such a great relationship with all of our coaches and to be a part of a program where our coaches invest into us so much.