What Game Film Are You Watching?
For me, there is never a bad time to be thinking about football. Most colleges have just wrapped up their spring practices. Spring ball focuses primarily on player development whereas fall camp is primarily for putting together depth charts in preparation for the upcoming season. Thinking back to my football days, the beginning of preseason camp was something I looked forward to. But then 5 a.m. wakeups, three-a-days and sore muscles set in. At Millersville, after having the team run what seemed like way too many gassers at the end of practice, usually in full pads, it was not uncommon to hear Coach Carpenter yelling, “Don’t worry about the pain men, you always faint before you die.” The beginning of a new season is also fresh start, last season’s successes or disappointments meant nothing.
Each week during the season we would watch the game film of the game we just played, looking for what worked and what didn’t work, often with the coaching staff rewinding back to a particular play repeatedly. We would then watch game film of our upcoming opponent and begin preparing for that game. Focusing on the last game would not help us prepare for the next game. Learning from the last game would help us prepare for the next game, but dwelling on that game, whether we won or lost, did nothing to help us prepare.
The same is true in the game of life and in our walk with Jesus. What we did or said, or what was done or said to us, yesterday, while it might sting for quite some time, cannot be changed. The game film can be replayed and watched over and over, but the outcome of a particular play, or the final score of the game, does not change simply because we replay the game film over and over. We can learn from it, but what happened in the past is unchangeable.
The apostle Paul gives us a good model to follow. In Philippians 3:12-14 we read these words – “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead. I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
In this passage Paul is saying that he forgets his past and presses ahead. Forgetting does not mean wiping his past from his memory but instead he makes a conscious decision to not allow it to absorb his attention and slow his progress. And Paul had a checkered past, one that would have been easy to let burden him. Before his conversion on the road to Damascus he did everything in his power to persecute Christians. After his conversion he was persecuted, falsely imprisoned, and beaten, as he proclaimed Christ to the world around him.
What happened, or didn’t happen, yesterday is in the past. While yesterday might help to set your course for today and tomorrow, it should never hold you back. Yesterday is done and gone.
So, I ask you today, are you allowing your last game, or maybe even an entire season, to hold you back or are you using it to prepare you for next week’s game? Are you holding onto regrets, hurts, grudges, or feelings that need let go of? Today is a new day, a fresh start, a new season, so press on, both in life and in your relationship with Jesus!