Kim Linehan was one of the greatest long-distance swimmers in the world. She held the world record in the 1,500-meter freestyle competition from 1979 to 1987. According to her coach Paul Bergen, Kim did endless exercises and swam seven to 12 miles a day. The hardest part of her regimen? “Getting in the water,&rdquo...
Verses 1-4 of Titus chapter one introduce to us to the man Titus. Sometime ago Robert Schuller wrote a book entitled Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do! The book was a best seller. The reason is people are having a tough time. Life is hard. There are difficulties, there are hardships, there are obs...
When I was in college we used to sit around and discuss some of the deep theological issues of life. One of the questions we usually talked about was, “If God can do everything, then can he make a rock larger than he can lift?” It is a useless and unanswerable question because it pits God against himself. About th...
Former President Carter in his book Why Not the Best? tells of going to church one Sunday morning in Plains, Georgia, and being captivated by the preacher’s sermon title. It was this: “If You Were Arrested for Being a Christian, Would There Be Enough Evidence to Convict You?” He said he di...
She had a faint smile on her face when she walked into my study. She sat down and we visited for a while and then I said to her, “How are you doing?” As soon as I said that, she reached over and picked up a Kleenex and began to wipe the tears away. She said, “Pastor, I didn’t intend to cry today.&rdquo...
Last Sunday I told you about a national survey that revealed that 90 percent of the people in America claimed to believe in God. Now if you stopped right there you would think that God has never had it so good as he is having it in America today. But the surveys went on to ask more questions. One of them is, “Does your...
Dennis the Menace was trying to explain to a friend the difference between Father’s Day and Mother’s Day. He said, “Father’s Day is just like Mother’s Day only the presents are cheaper.” I think maybe fathers get cheated, not only in presents, but sometimes in church. We almost always preac...
A horseman went to Henry Ward Beecher, a great preacher of another generation, and said to him, “I have a good family horse I want to sell you. He is a good saddle horse, a good wagon horse, a good carriage horse. He works single or double with another animal. He pulls on either side of the tongue. In short, he is a goo...
Knute Rockne was one of the greatest football coaches ever. In his 13 years at Notre Dame, his teams won 105 games, lost 12, and tied 5. He never had a secret practice. In fact, he sometimes put up a sign for visitors that said, “Secret practice. Come and bring your notebooks.”
On one occasion when an Army scout missed a train connection and didn’t get to the Notre Dame game he was to cover, Rockne obligingly sent him the plays he planned to use against the West Point men. He explained his actions by saying, “It isn’t the play that wins; it’s the execution.”
All great coaches agree: champions are made by majoring on the fundamentals – blocking and tackling. They execute well. Teams seldom win by trick plays or gimmicks.
The same is true of life. Tricks and gimmicks will seldom get you to the top in any endeavor and can never keep you there. Major on the basics in all of life – work hard, honor God, be honest, kind and helpful to others, and go to church regularly.