Recognize. Remember. Bless. Pray.

Over the past two years, I've wanted to develop a solid, consistent spiritual base for this tennis team. So we started last summer at tennis camp focusing on 4 verbs. Recognizing what God is doing for us in the present, remembering the ways that God has been with us in the past, blessing others in the same ways that God has blessed us, and bringing everyone and everything under prayer in conversation with God.

Perhaps I have been a bit lax this year about in the face of the team with these themes, it has been a difficult year. And yet, God has been active in many ways. God has blessed us in many ways. And I think it is worth asking the question of ourselves: Have we noticed? Have we remembered our God? Have we cared for others? Have we been in prayer?

I know that the answer for me is "no" for some of those questions. And as much as it has been "no," I have been distant from God. We have gone through many trials this tennis season, and I, like a fool, have tried to take a lot of it on my own back. I can't handle it all. But the whole time I've been prideful in my own efforts, decisions, and accomplishments, God has been at work too. I believe it's about time to slow my efforts, humble myself, and recognize how God has been present.

Recognize
- God has blessed our goals, we have worked hard and we have improved. The tournament this weekend was testament to that.
- We have been given the opportunity to become a united team. Everyone that is/and has been giving, encouraging, helpful to others and worked toward the team goal of improvement has a community of friends around them supporting them.
- We have been given the opportunity to share in the success of others. Seth's undefeated run this weekend gave us one opportunity. Ben's lone victory against Fairfield gave us another. Kyle and Austin's comeback win against Westview was another chance to celebrate with others. Their have been moments of God's beauty that have come through.
- And as this season starts to draw to a close, and the blessings above begin to be seen, I feel that their really is a peace about this team. An assurance and a confidence is growing. We have matured and are still maturing at the same time. It is a peaceful journey, and we all have been a part of that peace.

Remember
- God has certainly given us memories this tennis season, from tennis camp through the first 9 weeks. I am thankful for those memories.
- I remember from further back though, I remember how I poured prayer over last year's team, and how God responded specifically to my prayers... for Jeremy Thomas to play his best tennis, for Daniel to keep his cool under calm and be blessed for his hard work, for Jared's ability to have confidence in his dominance, for Johnny to believe that he and Jeremy could compete with anyone. And God answered those and more...

Bless
- We still have the opportunity to thank God for the blessings by passing the blessing forward to others. How we do that is a question for all of us to think about.
- Can we bring unity to other situations we are a part of? School, family, church, etc.?
- Can we bring peace to situations in which we are causing conflict? With friends, teachers, family, others?
- Can we lift up the less fortunate in any way? Donating time, giving what we can, paying attention to how our actions affect them?
- How will we pass the blessing on?

Pray
I encourage us all to think about bring the recognition, remembrance, blessing all together in prayer. Communicate with God about all that is going on, and bring others before him as well.
- Pray for the other teams that we will play in Sectional. Pray for health, pray for good things to be happening in their lives, pray for them to play well.
- Pray for your teammates, especially those whose season is ending tonight or tomorrow. The younger guys need the blessing of having older guys come along side them.
- Pray for yourself, honestly. Bring burdens and stresses and joys before God. Let God hear you, loud and clear.
- Pray for others. Whoever they may be. The soccer team, your next door neighbor, Andrew Lanctot, whoever. Let yourself be a person of prayer.

These are my thoughts as we enter the last weeks of the season. I have been proud of this team, every one who has been a part of it at any point. We have grown on the courts, and I think we are growing as people. Let's keep both tennis and personal growth going strong.

Recognize. Remember. Bless. Pray.

I left aside the usual Thursday to come back to something more important today. As the school year drags on and we get further away from tennis season, further away from the influences and blessings that God placed in our lives, we also may tend to lose what we learned from that time.

I forget often about the value of hard work in completing a task successfully, about how the Lord will bless the labor that we do if we honor God with it. I forget the importance of praying for those who annoy or oppose me. I forget the blessing that I can be to many of my students.

So I wanted to put this back out here for comments.

What lessons do you remember learning throughout this past year?
In what ways is the Lord working in your life right now?
Do you see places where others need you to be a blessing?
Have you continued to pray for the annoying, the opposing, and your enemies?

I hope we can continue thinking about these themes for quite a while!

(By the way, the picture says recognize, remember, bless, and pray in Hebrew)

Holiday Season: Remember

Remember
If you are able to be honest with yourself, and you are feeling especially introspective this Christmas season, remember back to last Christmas time. If you had thought forward to the 2008 calendar year, what would you have asked for from God?

Maturity and growth as a person? I can say that my experiences this year have taught me, maybe more than any other year. Being a parent teaches, being a pastor teaches, being a coach teaches, and being a player does too. In a year of success, I realize that it was the sporadic failures that helped me mature. The long nights sitting up with a crying baby, feeling helpless. The long nights sitting up with my worried thoughts, praying my tennis players would heal fast, feeling hopeless. It is interesting that at the end of a year, I would have never asked for failure and difficulty, but they perhaps were one of the most important gifts I received.

What else would you have asked for? Friendships? Hopefully the tennis season provided us all with a chance to deepen relationships, and hopefully those memories will continue to keep us close to each other. Or perhaps those experiences will lay the grounds for new relationships when we are outside of Bethany Christian.

Maybe you would have asked for success? A Sectional championship? A good season? Anybody (Seth, Matthew, Russell) ask for an undefeated season? I don't think that we can ignore the fact that God blessed us with good gifts throughout 2008. We worked hard, and were rewarded. That's one way to see that God is good.

Christmas seems like a good time to remember that!

Recognize. Remember. Bless. Pray.

Recognize: Answered Prayer.
--- From the "Prayer Wall"

"May we eat the fruit of our labor; may blessings and Your presence be with us."
So far, answered.

"Be with everyone's health and strength and allow us to play our best when it counts the most."
So far, answered.

"Please help me to conquer my fear of losing in sectional."
Answered.

"Keep more rain off us, but when it does rain, enable us to use the extra time well. Help the rain to be a blessing in some way.
This was previously answered. We added and won the Penn match because of the rain.

"Help me to remember how to play the kind of clutch tennis I could last year."
So far, answered.

"Be with all the teams approaching sectional, and help everyone to be sportsmanlike and make good line calls, and for those who play their last match, help it to be fun and not a huge let-down."
I think Fairfield would say it was fun.

Remember: What it feels like to play well, with confidence.
Take this blessing of the Lord's into our next matches.

Bless: Our opponents again.
We have been playing well, we have been playing fairly. Let's continue this into the Regional, hoping that others will play well also. Let's enjoy our matches!

Pray: Continuously.
Let us keep this cycle in our mind, and continue to bless others with our prayer as well. Our families, our teammates, our classmates, our opponents all can be the recipients of our prayers. Let us bless them and seek the Lord together in a journey of discipleship.

Recognize. Remember. Bless. Pray.

This cycle has been critical to our development as disciples this year. As the season drags longer, we get wrapped up in so many things. This cycle can bring us back to where we need to be. Most of it is the "thinking" part of our "think and act" mantra. It allows God to again become a part of our thoughts, so that our actions flow out of praise, thankfulness, and truth and not the other kind of mixed up emotions that bombard us throughout life.

So what do we recognize God doing among us right now? We're all healthy heading into the tournament. We're all still in good relationships with our teammates and coaches. We've been able to come together as one, and that's exciting because it lessens the pressure come tournament time. Like Johnny said, we're not going to be disappointed in anyone, we're still going to love them. I recognize that this love and relationship-building between players happens on a small level, but to have 7, 8, 10, 12 or even more guys supporting each, their is a spirit of God at work among us. I praise God for the Spirit's presence here with us, at this point in our season.

What do we remember that God has done for us this season? I remember Johnny and Mikey's timely recovery from injury. Quicker than expected in Johnny's case. I remember the rain wiping out the Warsaw Invitational, and because of that we got to pick up Westview, Concord, and Penn. I don't know what God's involvement really was in all that, but for me, that is an example of how God steps into bad situations and makes them turn out for the good. It's such a big part of God's character to redeem bad situations and make them turn for the good. So perhaps the rain was just a natural consequence of a natural hurricane during normal hurricane season, but the natural situation was still turned for our good. I thank God that bad situations are never hopeless, because we know the Lord is at work.

How are we blessing right now? Well, the unity of the team comes to mind. And that we are hopefully lifting the other teams in the area up in prayer. And that we have been preparing to bless others because of the way that the Lord has blessed us. And that I'm constantly reminding us to think of being a bless, so much that it's all you'll probably remember of me when you all graduate and are coaching your own tennis teams. But I guess it's an okay thing to remember. I've been blessed by the way you guys take faith fairly seriously and allow me to speak about it. Let us continue to be a blessing.

And pray. The place where everything comes together. The place where we tell God of our love, and how we recognize God's work, the stories we remember of God's presence among us. The place where we ask God who in our life needs a blessing, and how we can provide it. A place of honesty, of humility, of thankfulness, of praise. A place to plead for God's presence, blessing, grace and mercy. I am not ashamed to say I will be praying right up and through the tournament, no matter what happens.

Because I have recognized that God's works all situations for good.

Recognize. Remember. Bless. Pray.

Are we seeing and recognizing God's presence anywhere as of late?
--> Perhaps taking the bad situation with the rain and making it better by providing an opportunity to play Concord, Westview, and Penn?
--> Perhaps the JV getting another match against LaVille is a blessing, it's always good to play more!
--> Perhaps you can think of something else?

Are we carrying with us the confidence that God will continue to be our hope in the present and future because of what God has done in the past?
--> God has taken poor performances and turned them into beautiful endings.
--> God has helped everything come together at the right time.
--> God has done many other things for you personally, what are they?

Are we blessing others?
--> Do we sincerely care about those around us?
--> Do we look for places to serve others?
--> Do we encourage our teammates and classmates?
--> Do we respond to God's blessings with blessings of our own?

Are we praying?
--> For our teammates?
--> For our families?
--> For our school?
--> For our "enemies"?
--> For our world?

Remember.

"The LORD has done great things for us,
and we are filled with joy."
- Psalm 126:3

I don't know what we remember. When we are going through a day, it becomes so easy to focus only on what needs to get done, that we forget about why we are doing things. And when we lose perspective on the why, then everything seems to be pointless.

Let me use a tennis example. Right now we work a lot on crosscourt groundstrokes and down-the-line groundstrokes. Sometimes we do this and we "go for more." The purpose is to eventually increase the pace of our attacking shots, and their consistency. But right now we make a lot of errors. If we lose the long-term view, the belief that our shots will get better, and focus just on the fact that we are making errors, we get frustrated easily. One part of remembering is trying to remember the purpose. Why are we working on this? Am I still focused on the right things?

I hope that one of the purposes for all of us is to continue to become like Christ. Many of our tennis experiences can then help us learn how to be like Christ in life's difficult and changing situations. But we have to remember that this call is one of our purposes.

I have seen this happening in different places this season already. Early in August, a player was struggling with feeling confident, feeling like they had energy, feeling like they could move their feet, and consequently, feeling like they could win. They were struggling with all of that and my advice was simple. Act like you are confident, act like you have energy, act like you can move your feet, act like you are going to win. Most of the time, actions guide our feelings in tennis. If you do something even when you don't feel like it, the feeling comes later.

And that's so true in our walk with Christ. I remember that my parent's used to force me to come to church. My dad always said that we would never skip a Sunday or Wednesday. I had to get out of sports practices to make it to youth group, miss Sunday baseball tournaments, etc. And I never felt like going to church. Then I got to college, and I didn't have to go. But a strange thing happened as I slept in that first Sunday morning of college: I felt like I wanted to go to church. The repeated action of going made me feel different about the experience. Now I love my church, and I am actually glad my parents forced me to go.

The point is that tennis can teach us lessons about being like Christ. One lesson that we can remember is that our actions guide our feelings. We need to act first, feel like it later. This has been something learned this season, and it helps us toward a purpose of being like Christ. Let's remember this.