Our small town high school football team had a record-breaking season last year. We finished 11–1, and ranked eighth in the state. This year our record is 0–6.

As coaches, we have all had the dreaded “rebuilding” season, the one where the most you hope to gain is respect for your efforts and sportsmanship. Even the best programs have rebuilding years. The best teams experience slumps. As coaches, we find this is a frustrating time. We get angry. We do not understand how we can do well one year and so poorly the next. We vent our frustrations on the players, our assistants, and even our families.We say and do things we later regret.

Following God even when you are in doubt is difficult. Oftentimes we get caught up in the uncertainty of our future forgetting who is ultimately in charge. After Moses died Joshua was immediately made Commander in Chief of all the Israelites. A responsibility that required leading God's chosen people to the Promised Land.

When Joshua takes his new position God immediately instructs him three times to "Be strong and courageous," as he leads God's people into battle. Joshua must blindly follow God despite the uncertainty of his future. Not only must Joshua remain unwavering in his faith as the Israelites fight their adversaries, but also he must stay diligent in conquering the temptations that come along the way--after-all he is looked upon as their leader.

The fifteenth chapter of John’s Gospel is all about love, the nitty-gritty of life, and faith. In this chapter Jesus teaches that He is the vine and that we, His people, are the branches, and that by being united to Him, we will bear fruit. Coaches are responsible for recruiting athletes; Christians are responsible to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost world. God delights to use Christian coaches to recruit players and then open to them the truths of Christianity. He often uses us to plant the seed of faith and to expose the lost to Christ.

When people think of excellence in higher education, Oxford University is often mentioned. That’s because some of the world’s most foundational philosophical ideas in government, religion, sociology, literature and business have been intellectually designed and developed by men and women who attended its various colleges. Luminaries such as John Wycliffe, Adam Smith, John Wesley, William Penn, J. R. R. Tolkien, T. S. Eliot, Margaret Thatcher and C. S. Lewis are just a few notables to have walked Oxford’s hallowed halls.

But anyone who believes brilliance can only come from places like Oxford, Cambridge or perhaps places in America like MIT or the Ivy League schools fails to recognize the simplicity of wisdom.