Those of you who know me probably know that I love sports. Well, maybe not all sports, but there are certainly a few that I can be obsessive about. Basketball and football are definitely the two sports I obsess over the most. I don’t know about kickball. Kickball’s okay.
I used to work at an afterschool program at an elementary school. When I worked at the school, the most popular sports were definitely foursquare and kickball, although you can bet I did my best to preach the gospel of basketball and touch football to the kids. Somehow, we managed to have a touch football league with a few of the other district schools. Some of the kids really loved football and literally begged me to be their quarterback. Maybe you don’t believe me, but even some of the girls were excited to play football. We had some great times. I was awesome, of course. I was like Peyton Manning out there.
A lot of the other kids, though, didn’t have much interest in football or basketball. It would be so hard to convince them to try either of those games. They’d rather play their foursquare or kickball. I’d always tell ‘em, “Kid, right now you love kickball ‘cause you’re in third grade. You’re eight years old right now, bud. When you get to middle school, kids ain’t gonna play kickball anymore. You’re gonna have to play a real sport. Don’t even talk to me about what you’ll be playing in high school. You ever see anyone win a college scholarship playing kickball?”
A couple months ago, on December 31st at the end of last year, I got hurt. A lot of you already know that I broke a couple of ribs playing football. I’ve actually probably talked about this experience a few times to many of you, so I apologize if this is repetitive. I hope you can bear with me.
How many people here have broken a bone before? Hurts, don’t it?
Getting my ribs broken was probably the worst pain I can ever remember experiencing. I’ve had injuries before, like sprained ankles and the like. I’ve torn a tendon in my finger, but I’ve never broken a bone or anything. Nothing hurt me as badly as those ribs.
It happened during a game of tackle football. I made a catch, tried to get some yards. Made a move and got past one guy. Saw another defender coming at me hard and at that point, common sense told me to just go down easy. I didn’t shy away from the contact and I did my favorite move – the stiff arm – but the speed and the angle of our bodies and the way I stuck out my arm at him just made us come down awkwardly, and his knee was driven into my left posterior ribs.
Before I even landed completely on the floor, I remember screaming. At least, I tried to scream. I think it came out more as a pathetic whine. I knew right away that something was totally wrong. It was more than just getting the wind knocked out of me. I couldn’t get up. I think I tried, but all I could manage was just to roll on my back. I was totally prone. My arms were bent so that my hands were pointing straight up – y’know, like roadkill, when you see a dying or dead dog with all for limbs pointing straight to the heavens.
It felt like I had a giant bruise inside my organs, and someone was squeezing it. To compound matters, I couldn’t breathe properly. The trauma to my ribs affected my lungs. I couldn’t inhale deeply. Have you ever had the wind knocked out of you? You know how you gain slight increments of relief as you inhale some deep breaths? I couldn’t do that. I could take shallow breaths, so I wasn’t suffocating or anything, but I couldn’t take even one satisfying deep breath and fill my lungs to capacity with oxygen. Every time I tried to take a deep breath, I ended up just making this pitiful whining noise.
I must have lied on the floor for ten or fifteen minutes. Try taking rapid shallow breaths repeatedly for that amount of time. It’s like hyperventilating or something! It hurts after a while and it just tires you out. That’s how I felt, in addition to the pain of broken bones in my body.
It hurt. It hurt bad. It hurt so bad I cried. That’s all I could do, was lie on the grass and cry.
Always thought I’d be tougher. Always thought I had a better pain tolerance. Guess not.
Eventually, some of the guys helped me get up and they drove me to the hospital. There, I experienced some great Christian love as my brothers stayed with me the entire afternoon that I was in the emergency room. I knew they had plans and better things to do, but they sacrificed their plans just for the sake of providing me some emotional comfort. I’ll never forget that.
Lying on the ground, before I got to the hospital, there wasn’t a whole lot I could do. I tried to talk, but it was tough to string together a long sentence. I remember praying in my mind, though: Oh, God, this hurts. That was probably my first prayer. And then I started praying, God, please get me through this. Help me endure this. Help me to trust in you. Help me to believe You’re in control of my life. Help me to believe you are my Rock. Those are the things that ran through my mind as I gasped for air.
Now, a lot of people get injured or hurt or sick. A lot of people get hurt worse than I did. I’m not saying I was dying or anything; I’m here right now and I seem fine, right?
And let’s face it. There are people who get hurt and don’t pray or believe in God or anything, and they heal up just fine.
Being a Christian doesn’t mean you’re going to heal faster than anyone else. Being a Christian doesn’t mean you’re going to be rich or successful or achieve all your goals.
Being a Christian means you have a right relationship with God.
Everybody in this world faces adversity at some point. Whether it’s a physical injury, an illness, an antagonist, financial woes, or any other circumstance in life, things aren’t always pretty. If you’re struggling with something in your life right now, it’s certainly not my intention to demean or belittle whatever you’re experiencing. But I think it’s fair to say that everyone has and will endure adversity.
The world offers much advice on how to overcome obstacles. There’s plenty of encouragement that you can get that will inspire you in the struggle. Hollywood’s littered with hundreds of feel-good, inspirational stories. How many sports movies follow that uplifting formula? Beaten-down underdogs band together and triumph over seemingly insurmountable obstacles and antagonists?
There’s a reason why that formula, so tried and true (and tired) over the decades, has been so successful. People love stories about underdogs overcoming the odds and finding success. Real life doesn’t always work like that, though. For every success story, you can find a bunch of failures.
But failure isn’t the end of the story. Failure, loss, pain – those are things that we naturally seek to avoid. Yet we know that there are times when they’re unavoidable. In those cases, and even in those times when we find success, victory, and comfort, we know that the story isn’t about what happens to us, but in how we respond to our circumstances.
In the Bible, in the book of Romans (8:28), it says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”
That’s all things, good and bad, which are, for Christians, designed to happen for our good. Sometimes we can’t see the good when we’re faced with adversity or obstacles. Sometimes we can see the good in retrospect. But when we’re undergoing a trial, it can be tough.
Even then, though, we can rest assured that even that trial we’re enduring is designed to draw us closer to God. Everything that happens in our lives is designed to point us back to Christ. It’s simply about our response to what we face. You can glorify the Lord in any circumstance. When we face trials, can we still see Christ?
A lot of times, whether or not you’re a Christian, it’s a temptation to focus on our own pain. People are just naturally self-centered. Whenever we feel pain, whether or not we are Christians, the natural inclination is to find some way to end that painful feeling.
When I was in the hospital that day my ribs were broken, when I was in the emergency room, some of the guys stayed there with me to just be a comfort to me. I know they had better things to do that afternoon, but they stayed with me regardless. While I was lying in the hospital bed and feeling some of the effects of a morphine injection, one of the guys mentioned how bad it must have hurt for Jesus when He was crucified.
I had this weird moment of clarity then, as I reflected on what he said. Yeah, I know how it feels to have three fractures on two ribs. That doesn’t feel good. But is that really the worst pain in the world? I don’t think so. There’s a lot of real pain out there in this world. There is real pain out there that I can’t even imagine. There’s people really suffering and it wouldn’t be right to belittle their pain.
But it did make me think: How bad must it have hurt for Jesus when He was crucified? As I lied on the bed in the ER that afternoon, I imagined what it was like to suffocate on a cross. I thought I was hurting, but the intensity of a crucifixion must be on a whole ‘nother level. (A real preacher can give you the gory details of what happens to a human body during a crucifixion. I just know it hurts.)
But you know what, things kinda came full circle in my mind right around then. I knew that the right response to getting injured wasn’t to lash out in anger or to feel self-pity or anything like that. It was about glorifying the Lord. It was about praising Him for my salvation and all He’s provided for me even though I was hurting.
I share this with you because I hope it encourages you if you’re a Christian. This is my testimony of what God has taught me over the past couple months. This is something I’ve learned with real clarity.
I’m telling you, every time my ribs ached, I would think to myself, God is in control of my life. That was my mantra. It sounds kind of ridiculous, but the whole experience actually made me appreciate God’s sovereignty more than anything that’s happened to me lately. It actually helped my spiritual walk to have this constant pain in my side because it reminded me of Jesus Christ. It made me think about my salvation during times when it normally wouldn’t have crossed my mind because I’m so naturally self-centered.
Maybe it was kind of a painful way to teach me, but at least I learned. At ETC we recently started studying the book of Ephesians, and one of the highlights in the first chapter so far is that we exist for the praise of God’s glory. When I read those passages, I’m just reminded how easy it is to live my life and not really give God all the praise He’s due.
But we know that we ought to praise God not only in our victories, but in our sorrows as well. As the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:10, “That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Paul delights in his difficulties because they give him all the more reason to praise God, whose grace to us is sufficient.
If you’re not a Christian, I share my story with you because I want to proclaim my Savior to you. Let me read to you a passage from the Bible, found in the book of 2 Corinthians 5:15-21.
11 Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. 12 We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart. 13 If we are “out of our mind,” as some say, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. 14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
This is the message of the gospel. “Gospel” means “good news.” The author of this particular passage, the Apostle Paul, is addressing Christians here. He’s basically exhorting his fellow Christians to share the gospel with others. The gospel is about reconciliation, reconciliation with God, our Creator. Reconciliation means to reestablish a right relationship with someone.
Holy God is our Creator. We, humanity, were created to have fellowship, a right relationship, with God.
However, because of our sinfulness, we became enemies of God. God doesn’t tolerate sin at all, and we’ve all sinned at some point. There’s no such thing as a sin that God will overlook.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God who lived a sinless life, died and was resurrected so that we might have salvation. When Jesus died, he took the punishment that God metes out to His enemies – the punishment that, rightfully, we should have borne. It is through Jesus’ death and resurrection that we can be reconciled to God. That’s how we can have a right relationship with God and obtain the promise of eternal life in heaven after our earthly lives end. Jesus is the only way we can have a right relationship with God. Living well, loving others, or doing good deeds is not going to reconcile us with God because sinful people can’t redeem ourselves from our own sins.
These are facts that we can learn from reading the Bible. Maybe this is a message you’ve heard before. But when you hear this message, you have to respond to it. You either reject it, or you accept it. But you have to respond.
The Bible doesn’t teach that if we become Christians, we’ll enjoy prosperity and physical blessings. The message of the gospel isn’t about bringing us happiness or healthiness or a greater sense of well-being. Accepting the gospel doesn’t mean you’re gonna automatically just tear up the league like Jeremy Lin.
The Bible teaches us that God saves sinners who don’t deserve to be saved. The blessings we enjoy as believers are spiritual and eternal. Are you interested in reconciliation with God? That’s the question. Are you able to humble yourself and recognize that you are an enemy of God, and in need of reconciliation? And can you admit that God Himself is the source of reconciliation?
Those can be hard questions, but they are necessary ones.
