Do you feel like you belong on a winning team?

Believe it or not, my freshman year in college I was skinny as a rail. I had worked hard and was active in high school, but I had not played varsity sports. Really, it wasn’t my fault. I had played football while I was in junior high, and then moved to a town whose high school didn’t even have a football team! I was crushed—and certainly not skilled enough to play baseball or basketball. So I got skinny. 

Maybe that explains why, when I joined my college dorm’s intramural flag football team, they never let me play. I was so frustrated. For the first couple of games I got zero playing time. Then somebody got hurt and they had to put me in on the defensive line. I think I was jacked up on adrenaline or something, but I made the next three “tackles.” From then on I had a place on the team. 

We should know that we have a place on the most important, most winning team—and that’s God’s team. If we are believers in Jesus, that means God has chosen us, that we are valuable members of the team. Paul, in 1 Corinthians, doesn’t use a team analogy, but he does use the analogy of the human body with its various parts. Paul also emphasizes that even the parts that seem less significant are treated with special honor (1 Corinthians 12:23). 

The reality, however, is that we don’t always feel that we are valued and that we belong. We can feel alienated. Interestingly, this morning I received a call from a dental office to reschedule a procedure for which I’ll need someone to drive me home. My wife Lisa would be out of town on the alternative date they offered me. When I said that I didn’t have a ride that day, the caller asked, “Can’t you find somebody to drive you?” I was surprised by how difficult that question was to answer. Since I have no family in this area, who in the world, in the absence of my wife, am I going to ask for this little favor? I can imagine that there are plenty of people who feel that there’s just no one they can call on, especially when the needs are much greater than a ride home from the dentist’s office. While the church isn’t a ride service, we should be a team that knows we can call on each other in times of need. We belong to one another. 

Even knowing we belong to one another, our life experience may leave us with the strong sense that we’re ready to get in the game, but we’re not given a chance. It’s not that we don’t know who to call in our own time of need. It’s that we sometimes feel that no one needs us, or the team doesn’t need us. I can assure you: you are needed. 

Or maybe you are at the top of your game and don’t need anybody. Perhaps you think that you can get along just fine without anyone. I have two responses to that line of thinking. One, there probably will come a time when you really do need someone else, a team, around you. And two, there is a team you can link up with so you can take your positive influence in the world to a whole new level. I know that’s true of the team that is the church.

God has made a tremendous promise to team church. He has promised that not even the gates of hell will prevail against it. There’s a lot to be said about what that really means in the context of Scripture (Matthew 16:18). Suffice it to say that the only biblical promise of such certain victory is about the church. It is the ultimate winning team. And though I know that not every local church can claim the promise that it will be around forever, I’m certain that the local church is God’s favorite expression of his forever, winning team.

When we come together as the church, we are reminded of the undefeated Lord and the infinite value he places on each one of us. Not only that, we are reminded that we are all called, corporately and individually, to a purpose that will really make a difference in this world and for eternity. I’m glad you’re a part of the team. 

What can we do as members of local churches to be more like a winning team?

Photo by Natalie Pedigo on Unsplash.