{"id":3589,"date":"2024-12-01T18:12:20","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T00:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/?p=3589"},"modified":"2024-12-01T18:12:41","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T00:12:41","slug":"winning-losing-and-living","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/2024\/12\/winning-losing-and-living\/","title":{"rendered":"WINNING, LOSING, AND LIVING"},"content":{"rendered":"

I watched a lot of football over the Thanksgiving holidays. Sadly, I saw three (or was it four) visiting teams demonstrate their victory by taunting the losing opponent, resulting in large fights between players and coaches.\u00a0 When you win a game on the opponent\u2019s home field, there is a right way to win and there is also a wrong way.\u00a0 Football is an emotional game.\u00a0 You play to win, and when you win, you celebrate.\u00a0 If you win on the home field of the opponent, you celebrate with your teammates and fans.\u00a0 You do not wave your flag in front of the opposing team\u2019s fans, and you sure don\u2019t try to plant your flag at mid-field on the opponent\u2019s logo. When you lose, you shake hands with your opponent and go to your locker room.\u00a0 You do not trash-talk your way off the field.\u00a0 Life is a lot like a football game.\u00a0 Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and there is a right and wrong way to respond to each emotion.\u00a0 Grantland Rice wrote, \u201cFor when the One Great Scorer comes To mark against your name, He writes – not that you won or lost -But how you played the Game.\u201d\u00a0 Might I also add that He marks how you left the field when the game was over.\u00a0 The Apostle Paul never played football, but he did write much about competition.\u00a0 He said, \u201cI have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith\u201d (2 Timothy 4:7) and, \u201cTherefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus, I fight: not as one who beats the air.\u00a0\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>But I discipline my body and\u00a0bring\u00a0it<\/em>\u00a0into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become\u00a0disqualified\u201d (1 Corinthians 9:26-27). \u00a0Give it all you\u2019ve got \u2013 on the field of play and in the life lived, but don\u2019t disqualify yourself by your actions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I watched a lot of football over the Thanksgiving holidays. Sadly, I saw three (or was it four) visiting teams demonstrate their victory by taunting the losing opponent, resulting in large fights between players and coaches.\u00a0 When you win a game on the opponent\u2019s home field, there is a right way to win and there…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3589"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3591,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3589\/revisions\/3591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}