by Sam Won
I love the NBA Playoffs! It’s been a dramatic few weeks filled with buzzer beaters, overtimes, game 7’s, exhilarating wins, and heartbreaking losses. Teams are competing at the highest level for a chance to become champions. Superstars separate themselves from the rest of the pack in the postseason. This is the time when players make a name for themselves and seal their legacy on the court. Unless of course you are Kevin Durant. I’ll explain.
First of all, let me begin by saying that Kevin Durant, a prolific scorer on the Golden State Warriors, will go down in history as one of the greatest to ever play the game of basketball. Not only that, when the NBA Playoffs began this year, the general consensus was that he was the best player in the world today! His team was a sure lock-in to win it all thanks to his excellent performance. Unfortunately, a couple weeks in, he injured his calf, which has sidelined him with no clear date for his return. When that happened, it became doom and gloom for his team, and struggle seemed inevitable. Instead of struggling though, his team went on to win five games in a row and hit their stride. All of a sudden, the same analysts on TV and fans on social media who were proclaiming Kevin Durant as the best player in the world, were now wondering if his team was better without him. Wait, what?!
You don’t have to be a basketball fan to know that you can’t be considered the best in the world and an asset to your team in one moment, to someone who is no longer needed and a liability the next. So which is it because those two things simply can’t be true of the same person at the same time. What made it so fascinating was how quickly the narrative changed and flipped. Yet I believe as human beings we can so easily get caught up in the now that we draw definitive conclusions based on the moment. The headline becomes the ending. However, if we do that, we will always miss the bigger picture, especially when it comes to faith in God. We become prisoners to our own limiting thoughts and beliefs all simply because we have become a victim to the moment.
In the Gospels we see that this is the m.o. of the crowd that follows Jesus. If Jesus teaches something profound or does a miracle, they want to proclaim Him as king. But if Jesus teaches something that’s hard to understand or receive, then they quickly dismiss and ditch Him. Think about it, the same exact crowd who shouted “Hosanna!” in one moment were the same ones who cried out “Crucify!” in the next. They became victims to the moment rather than seeing what Jesus was truly doing and who He really was. They allowed the now to tell the whole story rather than letting it be a building block to it.
Imagine now if you were one of the characters in the Bible who faced a trial. What if they let the test they were facing in the moment become the conclusion of what God wanted to do in their lives? Then for Abraham, maybe he would have thought that after years of not being able to have a child with his wife, that he was never going to be a father regardless of what God had said. For Joseph, as his situation went from worse to worse and further away from the palace, he could have concluded that the dream would never come to pass. For Moses, he might have thought that after Pharaoh rejected him even after miraculous signs from God, that ultimately God wouldn’t actually deliver His people from slavery. You get the picture.
I believe as followers of Jesus, we are called to be participants in the now rather than victims to it. In fact we are not victims to anything at all thanks to the victory of the cross! Victim mentality will only cause us to miss out on what God wants to do. Because we have relational access to God, we have the ability to take on God’s perspective for each and every matter and partner with the Author and Finisher of our faiths. Just ask Him for He is writing a far better narrative on our behalf than what we can imagine. And if you have breath in your lungs, know that He isn’t finished yet!
Of course the reality is that there will be times when we will feel discouraged and disheartened, but what I feel doesn’t have to negate my faith. I love it when my feelings line up with my beliefs, but I have learned that I don’t have to experience an emotion to exercise my faith! The moments that do tempt us to despair or give up are an opportunity to instead surrender and exercise our faith to seek God and hear what He has to say. We are powerful sons and daughters with a good Father. We don’t have to put God’s character on trial with every trial we ourselves face. The Judge is never the one on trial! Make a declaration once and for all that you will trust in His goodness and faithfulness. That He is who He says He is and that He will do what He said He will do. If those things aren’t settled in our hearts, we will allow the moment to define who God is for us rather than His Word. Do our confidence and courage come from our circumstances or from Christ? We are not called to be circumstantial Christians who are victims to the now, but faith-filled Christians who co-labor with Christ for His glory! No matter what the headline might be based on the now, just remember it never tells the whole story. Only God can. Only God does. Amen.