Maybe I’ve shared with you the experience of one of the greatest football coaches I’ve ever known. He was the athletic director at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, where I pastored, and he was a small college Bear Bryant. He had the kind of record, disposition, and reputation that Bear Bryant had. Most everybody was afraid of him. But he came to know Christ as his Savior through some witnessing, and one Sunday morning he walked down the aisle of our church. We had talked together many times about commitment to Christ—about what it meant and what he ought to do. That Sunday morning when he took my hand, he said, “Pastor, today I give my heart to Christ. Don’t put me on the bench. Put me in the game.”
Friend, there is not a bench in the Christian life. We don’t have one. You may be standing around twiddling your thumbs on the sidelines, but there is no bench on which to sit down and do nothing. As the people of God, we need to have such determination in the game of life that we know where the goal is, we are dedicated to reaching that goal, and we are giving our very best.