During a troubling time with his team, Vince Lombardi, the famous American football coach for the Green Bay Packers, decided he needed to go back to the basics.
Lombardi held up a football in a team meeting and said, “Gentlemen, this is a football.” One of the players, Boyd Dowler, a flake, said, “Coach, could you slow down a bit?”
When we start to stray from the basics of our faith, the tell-tale sign is that we lose our joy. Joy is to our faith as a barometer is to weather. A barometer measures the barometric pressure in the atmosphere. When it drops, a storm is generally brewing. When we begin to lose our joy, it indicates something is going on spiritually that needs our attention.
Christianity is about a relationship with God. It is not about a religious system, but it does take the disciplines of Bible study and prayer to develop that relationship.
The Bible reveals the character of God. We cannot know someone we don’t first understand. Any relationship grows by the time we spend with that person. Our knowledge of God is proportional to our time in His Word.
A relationship does not happen without communication. Prayer is the vehicle God has given us to converse with Him. Prayer is a two-way street—it’s us talking to God and Him speaking with us. A one-way conversation is not communication.
A third discipline is obedience. Jesus’ authentic followers obey His commandments. We must be doers of the Word of God, not just hearers. We can read the Bible and pray, but if we don’t obey God’s Word, we will deceive ourselves and develop a false Christianity.
Have you lost your joy? Go back to the basics of Bible reading, prayer, and obedience. The joy of the Lord will be your strength.
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Ken Barnes has had a twenty-five year career in educational pursuits. He has taught in various public and private schools in Pennsylvania, Hawaii, and Virginia. He also worked for seventeen years with Youth With A Mission as a school leader, recruiter, and director. Ken holds a Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction from Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the author of The Chicken Farm and Other Sacred Places. He currently is a speaker, blogger, and freelance writer. Ken lives with his wife Sharon in Mechanicsville, Virginia. Visit Ken at https://sites.google.com/site/kenbarnesbooksite/