“Knocked Off Your Game”

I enjoy watching football…… maybe not as much as I used to when there was less politics and bombast…. but I still enjoy the game. Well last week was the beginning of a new season and I had some cautious hopes for my teams. It got off to a shaky start when the team I really enjoy watching, (Patrick Mahomes & the Kansas City Chiefs) lost and looked very vulnerable.  Hmmmmm, something is not right in the universe. Nevertheless I collected my thoughts and made it thru until Sunday night when my Giants were poised to make a serious run toward prominence. Ah yes, the road to our next Super Bowl, starting with knocking off the dreaded Dallas Cowboys. 

Well by now everyone knows that a meteor hit New Jersey on Sunday night knocking the gravitational laws sideways… “E no longer = MC2”. The net result was that “what could possibly go wrong for the Giants, went wrong.” They got “knocked off their game”. After the blocked field goal for 6 points and the interception for another 6 points, a blindman could see that this is not ending well for my Giants….”turn off the T.V…. goodnight Irene, the party’s over.” 

I love the St. John Newman quote: ‘God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another.’  You can be sure that the devil will do his best to throw you off your game, off the mission that God has given us to do, especially the work he has committed to you and to no one else. 

Isaiah reflected: “ The Lord God has given me a well-trained tongue, that I might know how to speak to the weary a word that will rouse them. Morning after morning he opens my ear that I may hear.” (Is. 50:4) God’s enemies often tried to throw Isaiah off his game, to get him to stop speaking…..  and if he stopped speaking, the weary would be in trouble, they would lay down, they would not be roused. Pick a name, select a holy man or woman of the scripture…. the devil has tried to knock each one of them off their game. Herod tried to silence John the Baptist, but he would not be silenced. Satan tried to silence Jesus in the desert, tried to throw him off his game…. Jesus would not be stopped.

So what are we to do when this happens to us? Should we go crawl in a hole and lament that this is not fair; I’ve tried that and it doesn’t work… it only gets worse. No, let’s pray to recognize what’s going on… “God has called me to do something for him and I’m getting a lot of resistance… it’s not easy… I feel like quitting….but NO…NO…NO…by the grace of God I will not quit. God will give me the grace to recover, to “stop the bleeding”…. and then I can collect my thoughts and dust off my pants and begin anew. God will enable me to do what he has called me to do.

There was another game on Monday night that started with a shocking injury to the star quarterback Aaron Rodgers. After 94 seconds, he was knocked out for the season. His backup was thrust into that pressure cooker, hardly prepared and not really up to standard, yet he stood in the gap and did not allow himself to get knocked off his game…. and believe it or not, the Jets won the game…. woe, talk about something not right with the universe.  

My wife Judy used to say in the midst of some mishap, “boy I wonder how God is going to work this out”. I wasn’t always so cheerful, yet it was amazing that God always provided a way out.. … and often it was pretty exciting. So let’s fight to not get knocked off our game when the pressure comes. And that will be very good news and maybe really exciting.