Brown's Daily Word 1-30-08

Good Morning.
We are called to a life of dedication, sacrifice, and service. Our youth recently attended a youth event called Excel. One of the themes for the conference was sacrifice and service. As expounded in 2 PETER 1:5-11, we are called to a life diligence and virtue.

5 "But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."
This coming Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday. Football is a big American pastime. For those who live outside the USA, the sport Americans know as Football is totally different than the football played around the world. This Sunday the New England Patriots meet the New York Giants for the Championship of the National Football League. This will be the 42nd Annual Super Bowl game. The focus will be on excellence on the football field.
Peter, however, calls for excellence in our moral character.
I read recently about the man who is credited with inventing the sport of football.
Amos Alonzo Stagg was born in 1862 in West Orange, New Jersey, during the early stages of the Civil War. His devotion to hard work produced success both in the classroom and on the athletic fields during his youth. At the same time, he sharpened his spiritual obedience in the Presbyterian church. Acting on the guidance of trusted mentors - his pastor, Sunday school teacher, and sister - Stagg enrolled at Yale University intent on becoming a Presbyterian minister. There Stagg excelled at baseball and football, earning recognition on the first All-American football team. His pitching abilities secured him lucrative offers from Major League baseball clubs, but the sport’s hard-drinking reputation and his love for amateur competition persuaded him to pass it by. He still wanted to become a pastor, but Stagg struggled to express his faith in front of large groups. Stagg was a quiet man who spoke with a soft voice. During one conference in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, he eavesdropped on legendary university evangelist John Mott, who asked an associate why Stagg "simply can’t make a talk."
Stagg had no such problems living his faith, however, and decided to pursue coaching. He accepted his first job out of college in 1888 as head football coach at the School of Christian Workers, a YMCA training school in Springfield, Massachusetts. Anchoring the center of his offensive line was none other than James Naismith, another Christian sports innovator. Naismith bounced his ideas about the new game of "basketball" off Stagg, who was prevented by a prior engagement from playing in that sport’s landmark first game. When the 30-year-old Stagg was offered the head-coaching position at the University of Chicago in 1892, he told the university president, "After much thought and prayer, I decided that my life can best be used for my Master’s service in the position you have offered."
In Amos Alonzo Stagg’s day, college administrators were more concerned about academics than sports. Few of them saw any value in athletic competition. However, Stagg’s vision for football’s ability to impart virtue to its participants led to the violent sport’s acceptance by cautious college administrators. Teamwork, sacrifice, and determination would aid colleges in their mission to develop well-rounded Christian men, Stagg argued. As head coach Amos Alonzo Stagg invented the tackling dummy, numbered jerseys, huddles, athletic letters, and men in motion. When the forward pass became legal in college football, he had 64 such plays ready to spring upon unsuspecting adversaries. Stagg was more than just a technical innovator, though. He placed athletics within the Biblical teachings of Christ and His church.
In his first two decades as coach, Amos Alonzo Stagg’s Maroons dominated the Big Ten, which the school helped found under a different name in 1896. On campus, Stagg’s celebrity rivaled that of the distinguished university’s Nobel Prize winners. Stagg’s employers also detected the fledgling sport’s knack for attracting media attention and strengthening alumni bonds. Football provided a means for developing commitment to a cause.
Amos Alonzo Stagg coached until he was 98, finishing with a record of 314 wins 199 losses and 35 ties. In 1965, Stagg died at the age of 103. Much of his success can be attributed to his high expectations, both on and off the field. He viewed football as a grand tool in developing biblical manhood. Stagg demanded from his players’ hard work, intense focus, and sacrifice for the team. Coaching was his contribution to the body of Christ. "Win the athletes of any college for Christ," Stagg said, "and you will have the strongest working element attainable in college life." His overall approach to coaching defined the role as more than just strategizing.
Were Stagg to watch today’s Super Bowl game, he might not recognize the sport he helped craft more than a century ago. But is the game really so different? Stagg saw in every missed field goal a test of faith, in every struggle at the line of scrimmage the fire of character growth. Teamwork, he believed, fashions the bonds of Christ-like love, shaping the soul to receive the gospel. That’s the game of football Amos Alonzo Stagg fashioned. Amos Alonzo Stagg had moral courage!
Jesus expects moral excellence in all of us! That means that we must come before Him and allow Him to cleanse us of all moral defects, of all failures, of all sins.
In Him ,Who makes all things beautiful in His time. In Him we are more than conquerors.
Brown
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