Every competitive athlete is looking for an edge: a way to get faster—shave seconds off his/her time, get stronger, or jump higher. We know our performance depends on it.

In training, athletes often wear a weighted vest as they go through their drills, helping them push beyond their normal limits. The additional stress to their body in a controlled environment prepares them for the intense demands of competition. When the vest comes off, these athletes feel invincible. They are faster, stronger, and more agile. It is like a prisoner has been freed.

We all think about the fun and excitement of a big game, but we are at our best only if we have been committed to working hard in preparation beforehand. In baseball, we like to dream about getting the game-winning hit or throwing the rally-ending strike out, but that will likely only come true if we put sweat and practice into making ourselves better. Baseball success, like any other sport, comes when we do the behind-the-scenes work. This means that when we are at home, we need to be running, doing the exercises our coaches assign and getting enough sleep. And in practice, we must work on mechanics, think through game situations and do all the repetitions of batting, running the bases and backing up throws. All of this preparation gets us ready for game time.

I love college football and everything about it. I love watching a good offense, but there is nothing like a strong front line on the defensive side. There is nothing more intimidating to me than having a great front four that doesn’t let anyone advance down the field. They are the rock of their defense — a mighty fortress, so to speak. Nothing can penetrate them when the offense tries to advance. They stand firm. What an awesome sight it is to see nothing cross the line of defense.

Hockey Chat:  You don’t hear of penalties given for blocking the goalies view even though they hate when someone stands in front of them “screening” and then a puck trickles in unseen.  There is no rule in the rule book about that therefore it’s an OK tactic.  The goalie would like to make up that rule but if everyone got to write up their own rules for the book the game would be a mess.

I sat with a coach whom I had known for years, discussing how to help someone in the midst of crisis. He desperately wanted to help, but, almost in tears, he revealed he could not because of his own finances. He was enslaved to debt. I wish I could say his story is the exception to the rule, but sadly it is not today. We live in an age of credit. An entire industry is built on encouraging us to incur large amounts of debt. Many companies earn more from interest than from the products they sell. Debt service takes a huge part of people’s income. Proverbs 22:7 clearly warns us about debt: “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is a slave to the lender.” Debt causes us to shift our allegiance to those we owe and away from God.

One of the earliest lessons I learned in competition was that no one came to our home field and defeated our team in front of our family and friends. It was always motivating to deny the visiting team victory on our turf. There’s something special about being the home team. Teams now have slogans like “Not in our house!” and “Not in our backyard!” There is a responsibility to secure and protect home-field advantage.