The questions are numerous. What is success? How do we define our victories in life? Does my life have a scoreboard? More importantly for me, do I define myself by those successes? Is my own self-worth caught up in my performance? Is ‘who I am’ based entirely on what I do? And how does that affect the people I live and work with each day?
Michael Jordan knew he was great. He didn’t need to make every buzzer beater to know that. I’ve seen the quote on this poster plenty of times over the years, but this week its message hit me in a new way. It’s becoming clear to me just how much I depend on my own activity in order to feel like I’m valuable. I am finally waking up to the truth that God is absolutely delighted with me (please check out Psalm 18:19 and Zephaniah 3:17). He is delighted with me apart from ANYTHING that I do or accomplish.
So what? What difference does that make? I am convinced that it makes all the difference in the world. MJ was great before the shots left his hand. He was free to fail. He says it himself, that is why he succeeded. In my own life, I have not lived with a freedom to fail. I have lived with a chip on my shoulder. I’ve lived with a desire to show everyone, God included, that I am really good at stuff. Sports, school, teaching, coaching, ministry, parenting, running, the list goes on. Much of the time I did good things, sometimes not. But my mindset, often unconsciously, was “I’ll show them”. Maybe that doesn’t make much sense. Like I said, I’m only just beginning to figure much of this out. But I do know that living in light of the truth that God is thrilled with the fact that He created me is really opening my eyes. It sounds so stupid to admit, but I don’t know if I have ever viewed the fact that I was born as a really, really good thing in His eyes. Jesus loves me, this I know…but it goes a whole lot deeper than that. Jesus delights in me. He is ecstatic about the fact that I exist. Man, how great is that? I can just live my life. A life full of joyful obedience to Him with no fear of letting Him or anyone else down.
I’ve also been thinking about my years as a Coach. Did I project my own personal need to perform onto those athletes? I don’t know, but I suspect that I did very little to create an atmosphere of being free to just play. Free to fail even. Not encouraged to fail, mind you, but free to fail. Did I communicate to our players that their ability to perform on a given day was in no way connected to their value as people, to me or anyone else? I hope so. Not only would that have helped the players have a healthier self-image, but the result is they would have played better. It seems so simple.