What He Said in the Car

A Kingdom Mindset for Sports Parents — Part 2 of 2 Romans 5:3

All eyes were on the center mat.

My youngest son, Deacon, was in the state finals. His opponent had just upset the national champion at that age and weight. The moment felt enormous and my son looked so small to me in that moment, the way your kids always look small when the stakes are high. He was bouncing on his toes, shaking out his hands, doing everything athletes do when the nerves hit.

He won. Proud dad moment!.

But the proudest moment came on the car ride home.

My wife asked him: Were you nervous before the match?

He said yes, very nervous.

What were you telling yourself in those moments?

He said: I was telling myself that my parents and Jesus love me whether I win or lose.

I have coached and competed for a long time. I have been in a lot of big moments. But I want to tell you, nothing I have ever accomplished on a mat or a sideline has moved me the way those words did. Because what my son had found, standing in the most pressurized moment of his young athletic life, was an anchor. Not a pep talk. Not a performance cue. An anchor.

Romans 5:4-5 traces the chain all the way home: suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. This word hope carries the weight of certainty about what hasn’t yet fully appeared. A confidence that holds when the circumstances cannot. Paul says this hope does not disappoint, because God's love has been poured into our hearts.

That is what my son had found on that mat at that moment. The love of God poured into his heart  and it held him when the moment was too big for anything else to hold him.

This is the whole aim. Sports is a vehicle, one of the best vehicles in my opinion, to forge identity in Christ and anchor hope in the only thing that will hold when you cannot: the love of King Jesus. Wins and losses are the fire. Character is what comes out. And if we, as parents, can keep our aim on the King's aim, we will raise children who know who they are not because of what they achieve, but because of whose they are.

The fiery trials of life are not the enemy. It is an instrument. And the King knows exactly what He is forging.

Glory in it.