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When I was a teenager and still some 15 years from becoming a believer, I played competitive junior tennis. I had talent, but I was a frustrated player.
One reason was that I played on the same team as two of the top players in the state. Both of them were less than perfect examples of sportsmanship. In fact, one of them would take his racquet after a loss and depart behind the nearest building, where he would smash the racquet to bits.
The other reason is that I didn't know how to give it my all. I know it sounds trite. We all grow up hearing about "giving it all" or "leaving it all on the field of play," but I just didn't get it. And so I grew to be a frustrated, somewhat talented tennis player with no ideas about how to change.
Dad Asks A Dilly Of A Question
Then my Dad, a strong believer and Bible teacher, got an inspiration.
He sat me down one day and asked me a thought-provoking question about tennis. "Son?," he said. "Do you want to be good?"
I probably had never, to that point in my life, considered a question my father had asked me more than I did that one. Usually, I was quick to speak, but this time I truly pondered what he was saying. It was a long time before I answered.
"I want to be good, Dad," I said quietly.
"OK, then," my Dad said, "Beginning in a few weeks during summer break from school, you'll be going every day to spend the entire day at a tennis center with a tennis coach." I was thrilled. Only in later years would I discover what a financial sacrifice it was for the humble finances of our family for me to attend. But God had placed it upon my Dad's heart, and he had listened and obeyed.
A Rude Awakening
The first day of coaching, I arrived at the tennis center with baited breath. I could hardly wait to show the coach how well I already played and to see what he could show me about my tennis game that would make me even better.
What the tennis coach was going to show me, however, had little to do with tennis and a whole lot to do with me. As we first arrived, we met the coach. He was a serious man, a former serviceman turned tennis pro, and he approached his tennis students just like you might imagine.
"Put down your racquets," he gruffly intoned. "You won't be needing those for a while." Boy, he wasn't kidding. We spent the vast majority of our time for the first several days running drills on the court and conditioning in the desert countryside next to the tennis center.
One day, the coach made us run through the dry river beds of deep sand, up a little mountain (or at least it seemed like one as my life passed before my eyes while running up it), then back through the deep sand of the dry river beds to the starting line.
"Oh, one thing," he said with what might have been interpreted as a smirk, "You'll need to get back here in 2 minutes or you'll have to repeat the course in 1 1/2 minutes after that." Well, there was no human way that anyone could run that course in 1 1/2 minutes so, at his whistle, we set out running with all our might. We barely made it back in time.
I was depleted in the 100 plus degree sun. I had stitches of pain in my lungs from running. My muscles were spent from relentless drills.
And it was at that moment of absolute physical emptiness that I finally got what I thought I wanted. The coach looked around, rested his gaze upon me, and barked, "Hey! Get your racquet and follow me!"
A First Lesson To Last The Ages
As we arrived at the tennis court, my coach ordered me to take my place on the baseline on one side of the court, while he stood at the center of the net on the other side. He was basically reaching over the net onto my side of the court when he said, "I'll hit a ball and you just hit it back."
With that, he hit the ball as hard as he could into the very corner of my side of the court. It was past me before I could even begin to move. My coach was not pleased. "C'mon, go get those balls when they're hit to you!"
I remember thinking to myself, "Man, what kind of a guy has my Dad got caoching me. He's nuts! There's no way that anyone could get those balls. Nobody!"
"C'mon!," he yelled at me, hitting another impossible to hit ball as I began to feebly run toward a ball I had no actual hope of ever reaching.
Day after day, we danced, my coach and I. Him commanding, "C'mon, get it!," and me setting my face, every day more and more as the days progressed, to do it. I still can't really believe what happened as a result, but I ran it, I hit it, and lived it. I can't believe it, but...
By the a third of the way through that summer, I could reach those balls. By the middle of the summer, I was hitting outright winners off of them.
Transformed By Helplessness and Faith
In later years after having become a believer, I was able to ponder the lessons that I learned that summer and why I learned them.
First, you see, I was rendered helpless in that situation. As long as I perceived that I knew it all or was in charge of my situation in any regard, I was unable to change. And so it was only when the coach had rendered me first physically and then emotionally helpless that he was able to get through to me. Only then could he help me to break free of the self-defeating "I can't get to that ball" mentality that was crippling me as a player and, unbeknownst to him, as a person.
Second, I came to realize that there was someone who knew a lot more than me - a lot more - and as he led me through painful and uncharted waters, I came to trust him, even though I didn't fully understand him at first. It came to the point that he would say "you can do this," and - even though my eyes may not have believed it - my mind and body would say "OK, I'm ready. Let's go!"
And finally, when I played in a tournament at the end of the summer, advancing far deeper into the tournament than any other I'd played in before, being knocked out only when I had lost to the 6th ranked player in the state 6-7, 7-6, 6-7 after having lost 7 pounds of fluids in the desert heat, that man who knew so much was standing there waiting for me when I left the court.
As I walked off of the court, knowing in my heart that I had played the best match of my life and knowing even then that it might well be the best I would ever play, he met me just off the edge of the court and said, "That was great, son."
Before I had learned with my body and my mind and my human spirit what it meant to give it all - absolutely everything - I would have welcomed any compliment, enjoyed the flush of pride I felt as a result, and then would have moved right on to disbelieving in myself again.
But having learned what it meant to dearly pay the price to leave every encounter with the absolute knowledge that I could have done no better whatsoever, I relished his compliment. Not because I felt pride, but because I knew that he and I had arrived there together, and that we both knew at that moment that it was truth.
Reaching The Ball In The Spiritual Court
Years later, I would come to Christ and, through lengthy and diligent prayer, have God make me vividly aware of the things I've shared here, and their application to my spiritual life.
Not that I reach every ball on the spiritual tennis court, mind you. I have found that spiritual tennis is a lot harder than physical. But none the less, I have seen that when I seek with all my mind and body and Spirit to reach for what He wants me to reach, I can do it with His help.
Christ has helped me to understand that I am helpless without Him, that He knows everything and I can trust Him in That, and that when I overcome a particularly difficult battle and see the victory, He is there to celebrate that with me - because we got there together.
When I don't understand what He wants me to say or do or be, I have come to trust Him. Because in all the river beds I've run through alone, up all the mountains I've had to climb alone, in all the moments when I was spent and desperately struggling to move past myself and press on alone, I knew that I was not alone at all.
He was there, and I could not do anything without Him. It was that way this morning when I awakened, too. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for showing me that giving it all for you means giving it all with you.
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This is one of the most stirring scenes from a film that you will ever see. Please DO NOT leave this page without viewing it.
You will never forget the lesson of this scene and - now that you know a bit of my story - you'll understand why I never will forget it, either. It will remain with me always, because the lesson from this scene was written by Christ, all those years ago, upon my own heart.
Labels: Facing The Giants, inspirational, Jesus, movies, video
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This old life seemed much too long
