Recently, I was invited to bring the closing message at a Fields of Faith gathering at Van High School in East Texas. Approximately 200 middle and high school students gathered on the football field, along with area pastors, coaches, and other adult leaders.
Fellowship of Christian Athletes huddles around the country host these worship nights. The events are largely student-led, with students sharing Scripture, personal testimonies, and worship.
The Van FCA had been focusing on identity in Christ—a subject that has become deeply personal to me. Who are we apart from our performance? Where do we find our worth when the scoreboard, our circumstances, or the opinions of others tell us we aren’t enough?
When I stood before the gathering, the coach in me wanted to bring everyone closer for a “team meeting.” But they were sitting in small clusters, spread between the two 35-yard lines and stretching out toward midfield.
Getting everyone closer was going to be a challenge!
So I began with a question.
Do you remember your first image of God? How you thought about Him? How you felt He thought about you?
When I was seven years old, we lived in a very small community in northwest Mississippi. I was the youngest kid in the neighborhood, which meant I was usually picked last when we divided into teams for football, basketball, or baseball.
We played football and baseball in a vacant lot and basketball at a nearby driveway goal. Getting picked last didn’t bother me much. I just wanted to play.
On one occasion, though, I was hanging out with two older boys, probably 11 or 12, who pressured me into buying a pack of cigarettes. The three of us proceeded to smoke them in a big culvert under U.S. Highway 61.
At the time, I considered this the worst thing I had ever done.
I was also well beyond the boundary my parents had established for me—a couple of blocks around our house. Between the cigarettes and where we were smoking them, I was scared the entire time.
When we finished, I ran home as fast as I could. As I got closer, a neighbor picked me up and told me my parents had been looking for me.
Even as I write this today, I can still feel the fear that came over me.
When I arrived home, my dad was packing a suitcase. After a very brief interrogation—which I successfully lied my way through—I learned that my Pap Paw had been seriously injured in an accident on his farm. An ambulance was taking him to the largest hospital in the area, about an hour away.
As I listened, I quietly reached a conclusion:
God was punishing someone I loved because of what I had done.
Pap Paw remained in a coma for 28 days before recovering.
All that time, I believed it was my fault.
My earliest image of God was of a Judge who stood ready to strike me—or someone I loved—when I did something wrong. I carried the fear of that afternoon for years.
Looking back, I can recognize a question people have wrestled with for centuries: When something terrible happens, whose sin caused it?
That was the assumption the disciples brought to Jesus when they encountered a man who had been blind from birth. Had he sinned? Had his parents? Jesus challenged the connection they were making between that man’s suffering and someone’s personal wrongdoing (John 9:1–3).
At seven, I didn’t understand that. I simply knew I had done something wrong and that someone I loved was hurt.
I finally told my parents the truth about a decade later, when I was a senior in high school. By then, I had begun a relationship with Jesus, and my understanding of God’s character had changed considerably.
If you asked me to identify an early experience that got my attention and profoundly influenced the direction of my life, that afternoon would be near the top.
The accident wasn’t proof that God was punishing my Pap Paw for my behavior. But the experience exposed my conscience, my fear, and my need to know who God really is.
Have there been moments in your life when, either immediately or years later, you recognized that God was getting your attention?
I think of those moments as key plays in a game. Coaches sometimes call them leverage situations—moments when what happens next can significantly affect the outcome.
Experience helps a coach recognize them.
In a short high school or college season, you can’t always save your best bullpen arm for the final three outs. The game’s most critical moment might arrive in the fifth inning. You have to recognize it and respond.
That’s one reason I enjoy watching postseason Major League Baseball. In a best-of-five or best-of-seven series, managers often respond to those moments much earlier than they would during a 162-game regular season.
At seven years old, I had no idea how significant that afternoon would become. I could only see it more clearly as I grew older.
A few days after Fields of Faith, a Van coach sent me this message:
One kid told me “when he told the story about smoking a pack of cigarettes at 7, he had me! I was locked in after that!” I asked him why did a story about smoking make him focus and he responded, “Coach, I heard that and I knew he was gonna be real and not just some person I don’t know telling me how I’m supposed to live!”
I had wondered how to connect with students scattered across a football field. For at least one young man, sharing an honest story from my childhood helped close that distance.
Another Van coach sent a message after reading my book, Beyond the Scoreboard: Always About Winning. But Never Only About Winning.
“Your book spoke to me in so many different ways. It was exactly what I needed…thank you for the book, words, and wisdom. I am like most coaches wanting to coach the best group of players I can…but seeing someone who has lived it and has the perspective you share biblically and baseball related is the best ‘real’ advice I feel one can get…keep touching lives…you touched mine and hopefully the lives of the players I coach for the next many years…”
Both messages encouraged me. They also reminded me why telling the truth about our lives matters.
As coaches, we spend so much time teaching, correcting, preparing, and evaluating. We want to help young people grow. Sometimes that begins by letting them see a little more of us—the mistakes, the fears, and the questions we have carried.
At Van, I began by asking students how they thought God saw them. I shared the story of a little boy who got that terribly wrong.
My hope is that they left knowing they could bring their own fears and failures to Jesus—and that their worth in Him reaches far beyond their performance.
I’m still learning to live in that truth myself.