NFL Draft

Well, the 2012 NFL Football Draft officially begins today at 5:00 pm PST.  I’ve had a special interest in the top couple of picks due to close proximity of Stanford University and their star quarterback Andrew Luck.  I closely followed Stanford’s season for the last few years and enjoyed watching Luck at work on the gridiron.  He is a talented athlete, is well composed, confident and seems to have a good eye for making the right play at the right time.  He makes for a good example for some thoughts that have been going through my mind since the wee hours of the morning today.

II Timothy 1:7 says that “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”  (NKJV)  When you look at that particular verse it is interesting to notice that you have God’s supernatural power and ability on one side and man’s natural abilities on the other.  In between is God’s agape love.  His love is the balance between the two forces.  His love is the controller of the power that comes from God and flows into a Christian’s life here on this earth.  The filter of God’s love gives man the composure, confidence and accuracy required to be of good service to his fellow man. 

So, what does this have to do with the NFL Draft and Andrew Luck?  Andrew Luck in many ways reminds me of the confidence I used to enjoy when I watched Joe Montana, argumently the best quarterback to have ever played the game ( I’m sure that I am a bit prejudice since he played for the San Francisco 49ers and led them to four Super Bowl victories, but then again the stats tend to agree with me!). While it is way too early to put Luck into the same category with Montana, there are many similarities. For our purposes here, let’s just say that Luck, like Montana, possess the ability to control his skills and abilities and funnel them into the best play available at the time for the good of his team.  One is not always sitting at the edge of their chair with their heart in their mouth while they watch him play.

I am sure that I might take some flack for this statement, but I can’t say the same thing for Luck’s biggest competition in this year’s draft, Robert Griffin.  This young man is also loaded with athletic talent and ability, but to me, does not yet show the over-all self control as well as the vision of team football that Luck displays.  While he has demonstrated the repeated ability to make the big plays, he tends to make me a little nervous when he is running his offense.

It is like a Christian who does not quite have a handle on God’s love for him.  Without that knowledge and experience of it, he may not always use the power of God that is available to him to it’s maximum strength, if he even knows it is available at all.  God’s power becomes “a sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t” frustration to him!

This scenario also reminds me of the 1969 SS 396 Camaro that my wife’s Mom had when Piper and I were dating.  That car had incredible power, but the driver had to know how to control it in order to enjoy it safely!  Like the time my wife was driving out of the parking lot in High School, went to drop the transmission into to neutral so she could rev it up and impress me, (as I drove by in my “classic” 1951 Chevy Deluxe…) only to miss neutral on the floor shifter and ram it into reverse while stepping on the gas!  What resulted was an instant huge puff of white smoke, the screeching of tires and the smell of burning rubber as she quickly slid her head under the seat!  

Then there were the many times she would go to back out of her spot in the church parking lot after a BYF (Baptist Youth Fellowship) meeting and tap the gas a little too hard which always resulted in the same smoke and screech!  It seems that the rear end of that car was just way too light for the gigantic engine sitting over the front tires!  (It was a blast to drive through – I’m sure that all that smoke and screeching was not always by accident!)  Did I tell you about the time she took a friend for our ride in our new 1977 Datsun 280Z and had it up over 100 mph on the twisty country roads leading out to our nearby coast…?  She’s been such a blessing!  She always liked hot cars and therefore we almost always owned one!)

The driver of that car had to understand the idiosyncrasies of the car and then demonstrate great self control and restraint in order to drive the car.  It is the same as with God’s love.  Without it a Christian can easily find themselves out of control as the drive through the roads of their life.  Once again, think of God's love as controller of your life.  Whenever you face a tough situation reach out for God’s power, but never forget to first attach it to the controller of His love.  Have a fun day, stay in tune to His Word and keep asking yourself… “What am I expecting today?”