Football players follow their coach, not the leader of the half time show. Follow and obey Coach Jesus! If you’re stuck in religious half time, get back in God’s game and play your heart out every day for Coach Jesus!

Too often as modern Christians we pick and choose what we want from the Bible. Then we celebrate our choices like a Super Bowl Sunday half time show. Afterwards we declare ourselves winners while we walk away and ignore the second half (the parts of the Bible that we don’t like) by living according to our own desires rather than according to what God desires. There’s nothing super (or spiritual) about that. If you call yourself a Christian, it’s time to stay in the game and be a grace-filled and Christ-filled spiritual playmaker throughout the week, not just a spectator for a Sunday morning religious half time show and a no-show for Jesus during the rest of the week.

Half-hearted Christians prefer a Sunday half time show more than the Spirit-led teamwork of daily discipleship. However, playmaking with the risen Jesus is much more exciting that watching a religious half time show.

Fear fades away when you leave your half time comfort zone begin to live your life in the Spirit-led zone! (See 1 Timothy 1:6.) The second half of the Christian life is learning to courageously follow and obey the risen Jesus with a humble childlike spirit.

Grace empowers Christ-followers to be Spirit-led playmakers not just religious bench sitters coasting toward death and Heaven. Real players prepare for the second half while the spectators watch the half time show. A Christian half time show won’t teach you to be a Spirit-led playmaker. You have to stay in God’s game and play your heart out to learn that. Be a Spirit-led playmaker, not a spiritually dead spectator.

When Christianity is presented as little more than dutiful and passive church attendance, it’s no wonder that few Christians are visibly and passionately excited about the living Jesus throughout the week. Church too often puts people on religious autopilot and causes them to trust in their Sunday attendance more than in the risen Jesus.

You can’t see light when your eyes are closed. Open your eyes and behold Jesus, the Light of the world! The clearer your perception and awareness of Jesus, the more you will experience His love, His power, and His presence and the more you will want to be a Spirit-led playmaker on Team Jesus!

Grace makes following and obeying the risen Jesus a full-time heart calling, not a weekly hour for attending a religious program. It doesn’t eliminate our need for repentance and forgiveness. It reveals it to us.

God loves us unconditionally, but He doesn’t accept us unconditionally. If that was the case Jesus wouldn’t have needed to die on the Cross to pay the penalty for our sin. Accepting us into His presence was very costly for God as He demonstrated His great love for us by dying to rescue us from our rebellion against Him.

Grace knows that it’s not unkind to disagree with people, but it is unkind to demand they agree with you. When people demand approval of their behavior in the name of tolerance or grace, they’re being intolerant. No one has the right to demand that you approve of their behavior. To believe that church attendance annuls your indulgences in wrongdoing is to miss out on the reality of God’s grace.

Unconditional approval of people’s behavior isn’t love. It’s denial. God’s grace, however, empowers a person to no longer live according to his own desires but according to what God desires.

Set self aside
And power glide
To be a playmaker with Jesus.