I stood at his grave in a beautiful cemetery. His grave was inconspicuous. The marker was very simple, with only his name on it. It was a moving experience for me.

I had first met this man eleven years before his death. For years I had watched and admired him from a distance and never dreamed I would get to meet him. In fact, I actually got to be with him on several occasions over the years. I cannot say I knew him well, but I was as impressed after getting to know him as I was prior to knowing him. He was a man of character, integrity, and humility. He was real. He was down to earth.

John was the man. He was the star of every team he played on at his school. Had the best car, the best girl, the best of everything. On the outside, he lacked nothing. Everybody wanted to be like John. His lifestyle was fast and furious. He played hard and partied hard as well. Most people thought it was good to be John. But John was not content. He knew he was missing something in his life. After practice one Wednesday, Bill, a teammate of John's, invited him to come to FCA that night. Bill thought John would never come, but he showed up. John heard the Good News of Jesus Christ, and it made him think. He asked Bill if he could come to church with him that Sunday as well. Something was happening in John's life.

It has been said that life is not a playground, but a battleground. Most battles happen in the unseen world and play out in the physical world. Knowing this, God gives us spiritual armor to be prepared for battle. Every piece of armor—the belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, shoes of peace, shield of faith, helmet of salvation, and sword of the Spirit—protects from the front. None provide protection for our backs. In fact, we are instructed in Philippians 3 to forget what is behind and strain toward what is ahead. God has our back. He gives us no armor for our backside because He has it covered. When we are right with God and confess our sins, we have nothing to fear. Proverbs 3 tells us that when we use good judgment, our sleep will be sweet.

How many times has a coach handed us a playbook or drawn a play diagram for us on the board? How many of us ever take our playbook home and look at it before bed just so we have an idea of what is going on? If we don’t understand the plays from the playbook, how many of us ever take the time to ask the coach about the plays and how to execute them properly? I used to be one of the guys who thought he’d learned something just by looking over his playbook.

As Christians many of us do the same thing with our Bibles. We pick them up here and there and look for the right “play” for our situation, or we skim them over hoping that we will gain wisdom by reading without going into depth.