Staying in the Game

I remember playing sports in junior high and a kid on the “B” team was playing defense against the “A” team offense. He made a tackle on a bigger, stronger running back and when the kid got up, he was holding his arm and complaining of it hurting badly. The coach told him something like “if you want to play “A” team ball, you have to play through pain. The next day the kid shows up at school with a broken arm in a cast.

Life is a series of playing through pain events. People we love, people we’ve known for years, people we work with, people we barely know often cause us pain and we have to decide whether to come out of the game, play through it or retaliate. At times, I’ve done all of the above. There have been times of pain where I have simply withdrawn and tried to hide from it. All that did for me was take me out of the game and cause me to miss opportunities that could have been much more rewarding than hurt caused by the moment of pain. Other times I have chosen to retaliate and when I make that choice, it’s close to a scorched earth policy where nothing is sacred, nothing is out of the line of fire and I often find myself wondering what in the world possessed me to make such a horse’s backside of myself. Finally, there are times I’ve simply played through the pain knowing that pain is often temporary and usually manageable if I’ll simply keep my eyes fixed on what is ahead. Now, it doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes stop to have a professional assess the situation and prescribe something to help me heal and it doesn’t mean that I don’t ever sit out for a brief time to recuperate. I’ve done both of those but then I got back in the game as soon as it was reasonable and kept playing.

One of the things I have learned through pain in my life is that it is not usually generated by people but by Satan working through people. When I focus on a person as the source of my pain, I most often react by quitting or retaliating, just what the evil one would want me to do. On the other hand, when I focus on Satan as the source of my pain, I most often play through it by first relying on God, the healer, to prepare me and get me ready to play on and then trusting that as long as I follow the physician’s directives I will be able to keep playing, to work through the pain and to achieve the goal he has prepared me for. I can face pain the way evil wants me to or I can face it the way God hopes I will, knowing that my suffering is not as great as the one who gave his life for me but that in my suffering and choosing to play on, I share in the victory Christ has prepared for me.

Philippians 3:10-11 says, “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.” This is what I want, to share in his suffering and his resurrection, to play through what tries to bring me down, to stop me and keep moving forward for what God has in store for me.

Grace and peace to you.

Jeff Jones
Decatur, Texas