Coaching Football's "Little Things"

I read something this week that realllllllly spoke to my heart. Dennis Kinlay writes in his book, The Mind of Christ, that he was in the cockpit of a small airplane piloted by a friend. He was bewildered by the array of instruments in front of them. The pilot said, “There are two instruments that you must have in any plane, no matter how big or small.” Kinlaw asked what they were. “One of them is the compass and the other is an artificial horizon,” said his pilot friend. Kinlaw asked, “Why do you need an artificial horizon?” “It tells you the difference between ‘up’ and ‘down,'” the pilot replied.

Kinlaw thought he was kidding until he explained that when you get up into the clouds and cannot see anything outside the plane, there is nothing in our bodies to tell us which way is ‘up’ and which way is ‘down.’ The pilot said, “When we rise into that cloud cover, I have just a few seconds to get adjusted to using that artificial horizon, because my body will tell me one thing, but reality will be something else.”

“We have no artificial horizon inside of us. We have no internal compass. Our bodies bear witness to the fact that we need guidance from outside of ourselves. Yet so often we think, It’s my life. I can control it. I don’t need God or anyone else. Then we make great mistakes, damaging our own lives and the lives of other people.”

The Bible is pretty emphatic that we need the guidance of the Lord if we want to be truly successful in life. God provides this guidance through His Word. The Bible will help us find out who we are supposed to be and how we are to live our life.

The prophet Jeremiah says that our “sense of direction” is not within us. We can never be as successful as we could possibly be without the assistance of God’s Holy Spirit. It’s why I’ve become so interested in really understanding what it means to be “in Christ.” I want to challenge and encourage you to seek an understanding of this concept that so you too might have the “Mind of Christ.”