Devo #4: Everyone is Wrong, Everyone is Loved

"The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." 

Galatians 5:6

Devotional Review

1. What is faith? Faith is returning again to what is important, and that return is enough.

2. How might that express itself in love? By reminding each other of some core truths...

These have been the messages of truth.

You are enough.

You are a brother.

You have so much to be grateful for.

3. How does that matter? It takes the pressure off. It's not about what we do, what we have, or what others think of us.

How to Move Forward

So we have started accepted the truths of Jesus. We acknowledge that I am enough just as I am. We know we are part of God's family, no needing to earn it. We see the blessings God has already given us. For some of us, the next temptation can be to simply say: Alright, then why do anything to improve? Why put any more effort in? Why not just do whatever?

Everyone is Wrong

I saw a tweet the other day from a fairly famous pastor, Timothy Keller. It started like this: "The gospel: In its view, everyone is wrong..." 

Looking around at society today, I notice something. We have a hard time recognizing that acceptance and agreement aren't the same thing. We are completely accepted. We can't do anything to earn more love from God. We been given a lot of grace and blessing. But that doesn't mean we are doing everything right. 

Let's put it in tennis terms. Arguably, the best player I've ever coached was Nathan Brendle. His senior season he lost a nervous first match and then won 21 straight. He once lost the first point of a match, and then won the next 48 points straight. He was pretty incredible. And I loved him, like I love all of you. 

Early in his career, he double faulted all the time. Like, one time I kept statistics in a match, and he had 26 double faults in a 2 set win. That's like 2-3 double faults every game that he served. He didn't do it well. There was something wrong.

We all have something like that in our game. We are tentative, we double fault, we are scared of our backhand, we hate going to the net. Whatever. Sometimes, we want to argue that it is okay. That really it doesn't need fixing. But to be the best player we can be, it does need some work. 

Life is like that too... we snap back in anger too often, we are impatient, we are too demanding of others, we are downright mean, we are lazy, we procrastinate, we quit when we aren't able to figure it out right away... maybe you see yourself in there.

So, there are areas to improve.

Everyone is Loved

But Timothy Keller's tweet went on: "The gospel: In its view, everyone is wrong, everyone is loved..."

This second part is SO IMPORTANT. We have to acknowledge that we all are wrong about things. To refuse to acknowledge that is just lying to ourselves. However, despite of all those things, we cannot be separated from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:37-38). 

If we don't get it right today, there's no shame. Everybody in the whole world messed something up today. Instead, we have faith in the love of God. We come back to the acceptance in God. The beauty of God is that God's acceptance isn't based on whether you got it all right today. God's acceptance is based on the fact that you are God's child. And you can't escape that.

Just like on the team, you can't escape being a brother. When Nate Brendle was missing all those serves, he'd be afraid to talk to me sometimes. When I'd come to the fence, he'd turn his face away and say I know I gotta get the ball higher on the toss. He'd insist that he'd do better next time, he'd apologize for being so bad. He'd get red-faced when he lost a match that he felt he should have won. But you know what... we loved him. Because he was our brother.

We didn't need the double faults figured out RIGHT NOW! It was enough for us for him to come back and work on them. It was enough for us that he recognized the fault and wanted to work. But even if he didn't, we were honored to ride out the service game, the match, the season, his whole career with him. Because he was brother. 

Sure, you've got things wrong. But the gospel (the good news) is that because you are loved, you have the space and the grace to work things out. Everybody works things out and different speeds, because we are really knots of wrongs all kinked together. Sometimes we get one loop undone only to realize there are so many more. But God has grace for us, and sees us as loved right now, while we try to work it out. 

The Result

So just because I'm not yelling at you all the time doesn't mean you've got it all figured out. Instead, it is grace and love and saying - you'll get there. You'll get there. And even while you aren't there yet, as a person or as a player, I'm willing to stand next to you and let you know that I love who you are.

Nate worked it out eventually. By his senior year, he relaxed into being a great teammate. He reached out and coached others on their serves. And he began to have some perspective on what was important. As he relaxed into that, he kept working on his serve, but with much less pressure. And double faults weren't something that plagued him during his All-District senior season. He had relaxed into the good news that everyone is wrong, everyone is loved, and the only thing that matters is faith expressing itself in love. Coming back to the work, but doing it with grace, and doing it together.