09/01/2023 – Back to Basics
During the summer of 1961, coach Vince Lombardi started the football camp season, holding something that needed no explanation to the team and said… “Gentlemen, this is a football.”
Football players that had been playing the sport for many years, coach Lombardi felt the need to return to the basics of the game. Insulting to some players and beneficial to others, coach Lombardi communicated his point, “if you want to be successful, we’re going to remember the basics and make sure we’re executing the fundamentals.” He basically said, you must return to the very basics of the game. At times, in our Christian walk, we too must stop and take inventory of the basics, to remember our first love with Christ.
Basics like:
Salvation by grace. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9)
Jesus Christ alone can save. “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)
Jesus Christ death and resurrection. “And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14)
Jesus Christ chose you. “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.” (John 15:16)
These are just a few of the basics of our Christian faith, that we forget. That is, we allow the cares and sins of this world to drown out our relationship with God. We lose the joy of our salvation; our first love becomes dull; our faith becomes a routine or ritual with no passion. This is when we must return to the basics. King David in Psalms 51, shows us how to return to the basics, starting with a humble and contrite heart before God.
Today meditate on this verse: (Psalms 51:11-12) “11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.”
PS: Six months later after the football camp, the same group of men gathered to hear another one of Vince Lombardi’s speeches. This time it was to celebrate their NFL Championship and their 37–0 victory over the NY Giants. By remembering the fundamentals, they had become the best in the league at the tasks everyone else took for granted.