S2 E3 - You Are Not Defined By One Game

Last night's National Championship game between Georgia & Alabama was great. What caught my attention was something that happened after the game though. Nic Saban, Alabama's head coach, did his best to encourage his star players when he spoke up for them and reminded the press saying, "These guys are not defined by one game." Well...we are not defined by one mistake. The good we have done and will do by God's grace is not negated because we make mistakes. We all are going to fall, what matters is that we get back up again. 

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Transcript

Hey everybody, and welcome back to the Set Your Mind Above Podcast! I’m your host BJ Sipe – I’m a Christian, a preacher, a husband, and a father. In this podcast we take everyday, ordinary events and explore how they can teach us extraordinary, eternal truths. I’m so glad that you joined me for this episode. Now, let’s open up our minds, our hearts, and our Bible’s together. 

Thank you everyone who has reached out on account of my last announcement. Last week, I and actually now the rest of my family all came down with what we are only assuming can be Covid. In fact, about 10 others we were around last week all are sick and tested positive over the weekend with the same symptoms, so it’s a safe bet by now. While we are not 100% yet, we are definitely on the mend! Being sick has given me a lot of time to get into the Word, spend time with my family, and catch up on rest, so I’m thankful for that. By the end of the day I’m exhausted, so I felt not one ounce of guilt about laying on the couch to watch the national championship game in college football last night. It was a defensive struggle back and forth most of the night until Georgia broke the game wide open late in the 4th quarter. As a Duck fan I was pulling for the Georgia Bulldogs to win it, as their elite defensive coordinator Dan Lanning has been hired as our new head coach going forward. There were a lot of things that caught my attention last night: the respect both teams showed for each other, the amazing “guy on a buffalo wing” commercial by Zaxby’s (you’ve got to know the original video for it to be funny), and a few other things. But the one thing that garnered most of my attention was in the post-game press conference with Nic Saban, his Heisman quarterback winner Bryce Young, and his defensive star Will Anderson Jr. While most predicted these two young players would spearhead Alabama to another national championship, they fell short despite their best efforts. After the boys answered questions and were about to leave with their heads hung in defeat, their head coach, sitting between them, spoke up and asked if he could say something. What he said was powerful, and I want to share it with you today. “I’d like to say something. Can I say something? You know these two guys that are sitting up here, they’re not defined by one game. These guys played great for us all year, they’re great competitors, they were great leaders on this team. The contributed tremendously to the success of these teams, and we would not be here without them. Alright? And both of them take responsibility for the loss, but both of them contributed in a lot of ways in a positive way to give us a chance to win and a chance to be here and have an opportunity to win. So, I just want to thank them for that, and let everybody know how proud I am of these two guys.” Wow…that was powerful, wasn’t it? Maybe you can’t stand the Alabama football team because they repeatedly pummel your football team, but you can’t help but love Nic Saban. He’s not just a coach, he’s like a father to his players. And I thought what he said in that press conference there in the end was so powerful, and worthy of our attention today. 

You are not defined by one game. Certainly I think most of us can understand that much when it comes to an athlete’s career. Every dog has his day, and for there to be a victor there also has to be a loser. To discredit an athlete’s future or their other accomplishments because they fell short is absurd, as it would be even more absurd for that athlete to allow that failure to define themselves. But we’re not here to talk about sports, we’re here to talk about something far more important. How many of us allow ourselves to define others or be defined in our lives by our mistakes? My friends, it should not be this way. Psalm 37:23-24 reads, “The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives. Though they stumble, they will never fall, for the Lord holds them by the hand.” Here is a fact of life that we had better get used to: you are going to make mistakes. No one is perfect, so don’t pretend to be. The question is not whether or not we will make mistakes, the questions is how will we respond when we do? Do we allow that sin to consume us? Define us? Keep us from getting back up and doing what we know we need to do? Or do we press on and find our identity not in our mistakes, but in the saving grace of Christ Jesus? Consider for a moment what Paul says about himself in 1 Timothy 1:12-16, “I give thanks to Christ Jesus our Lord who has strengthened me, because he considered me faithful, appointing me to the ministry—even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an arrogant man. But I received mercy because I acted out of ignorance in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them. But I received mercy for this reason, so that in me, the worst of them, Christ Jesus might demonstrate his extraordinary patience as an example to those who would believe in him for eternal life.” Paul was a vile, awful offender – in fact he calls himself the chief among sinners. But look at what else he says: that is not what defined him, it was the mercy and grace of Jesus that did. It was God’s love that spurned Paul to rise and get back up to serve the living God! Imagine though, for a moment, that Paul did not respond in this way? That Paul defined himself by his mistakes, and thought surely “woe is me” and that God could never use him because of the great & terrible things he had done? How much good would have gone undone in the future if that were the case? My friends, you are not defined by your past mistakes. You are not defined by a past addiction. You are not defined by time spent incarcerated. You are not defined by an affair. You are not defined by…you fill in the blank. Yes, you must take responsibility for your sin and what you have done, but that does not negate any good you have done or any good you will do by God’s grace to come! And yet how quickly we forget this as a church, don’t we? How quickly we can buy into this “cancel culture” of the day and allow one mistake of an individual to define who they are for the rest of their lives forward and backwards in our eyes. Well let me tell you something, there is something else that defines me forwards and backwards in God’s eyes, and that is the blood of Jesus Christ. Am I a sinner? Absolutely. But I am a sinner that has been saved by God’s grace, and we must never forget it. If you’re allowing your mistakes to define you and keep you from being who God needs you to be, that’s worldly sorrow, and not godly sorrow. Let’s conclude then with 2 Corinthians 7:10-12,  and I want you to pretend that Paul was writing then to you, “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, but worldly grief produces death. For consider how much diligence this very thing—this grieving as God wills—has produced in you: what a desire to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what deep longing, what zeal, what justice! In every way you showed yourselves to be pure in this matter. So even though I wrote to you, it was not because of the one who did wrong, or because of the one who was wronged, but in order that your devotion to us might be made plain to you in the sight of God.” 

Thank you for tuning in to today’s episode, and I would invite you back Tuesdays-Fridays for a brand-new episode each day. If you haven’t already, be sure to find us on Facebook for occasional announcements and special video sessions. If you have benefited from this podcast, please if you’re able be sure to share it with someone else that you think could benefit from it as well. Until next time, know that I love you, that God loves you, and may we all each & every day set our minds above.