A Little Boost

by Ryan Krzykowski

Sometimes it’s the seemingly small things.  I’ll spare you all the details, but life has been challenging lately.  Work has been especially demanding, relationships have been hard, support networks have been permanently altered, parenting has been its usual combination of rewarding and yet exhausting, and that’s about half of it.  So when I volunteered at the last minute to fill in and share a message with a student FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) group at their upcoming morning meeting, I wasn’t sure what I was thinking.

In my current state, was this a good idea, to get up in front of young people with a message about something related to God’s goodness or the love of Jesus?  I decided to share something from Philippians 3, a passage in which Paul writes about how everything is garbage to him relative to the greatness of knowing Christ, and how he can forget what’s behind and push toward what lies ahead.  I shared with these students about how a walk with Jesus doesn’t eliminate our mistakes — but when our heart is to know Him and follow Him, our mistakes and missteps don’t define us.  We’ve been forgiven, as the price has been paid for that sin.  I showed video of NFL players dropping easy passes, and we talked about how eventually, if someone drops enough balls he’ll need to replaced in the game.  Contrast that with how Jesus works in us…I kept repeating Paul’s phrase, “forgetting what is behind” and tried to drive home the point that Jesus will never run out of patience with us.  When we blow it, He picks us up, dusts us off, whispers He loves us, and sends us right back onto the field.

I did my best, but I don’t know how effective the message was.  Except for that on the way out, one of the students, a 9th grader, gave me a fist bump and said that it was his favorite meeting of the year.  He said that God used our discussion to speak to him in a powerful way.  Honestly, that was pretty nice to hear.  I know that anything useful or good that came from that talk was in spite of me, not because of me.  But the way these last few months have been going, it was encouraging to hear something so positive.  One comment from one 15-year old person, and it gave me a real boost.  And as I type this, I’m thinking of a couple friends nearby who could probably use something similar.  I’m about to wrap up this post and go give each of them a little boost.

Let’s Coach With Purpose…