DO WE HAVE WHAT IT TAKES?

     The last few weeks and months, there’s been a lot of introspection going on in the Ohio sports world. In the face of high hopes, many Ohio sports pundits have been calling for the heads of teams to be fired or drastic changes to be made.

     In November 2024, for example, after THE Ohio State football team lost for the fourth straight time to “the team up north”, there were many doubters that OSU had the discipline and toughness, both physically and mentally, to beat “the team up north”, and to win a championship. They laid the defeat at the feet of Head Coach Ryan Day. Many thought he had to go!

  Secondly, my Cleveland Cavaliers had an almost unprecedented historic winning season, highlighted by two fifteen-game winning streaks. But on Tuesday night, they lost in the playoffs embarrassingly, for the third straight year. They, too, had their physicality and mental toughness called into question.

      Lastly, the Cleveland Guardians have Jose Ramirez, one of the best players in baseball. But year after year, they come up short in the Major League Baseball playoffs. Is the window for winning the MLB championship with Ramirez leading them closing sooner rather than later? Do the Cleveland Guardians have what it takes?

     Last night, I watched an interview with OSU stars Will Howard and Jack Sawyer, in which they said that after the loss to “the team up north”, they had a team meeting with a no-holds-barred soul-searching question-and-answer session about whether they had what it took to win the big games. In their case, the loss to “the team up north”, motivated them to dig deeper than ever before, and to make a conscious decision to become the toughest, both physically and mentally, team in the playoffs to press forward to win the National Championship.

    I was disappointed, however, when both Howard and Sawyer used what the Bible calls in Ephesians 5:4, “Obscene and foolish talking or crude joking”. So, in other words, it’s likely that many Buckeyes and sports stars in general don’t ask God to help them improve their toughness, which I think is sad.

     That being said, do we as Christians have what it takes to win souls? Do we ask God to help us by His Holy Spirit, and perhaps hold team meetings with heated soul-searching discussions? Can we, with God’s help, do what it takes to become a more disciplined and tougher team, if you will—to press forward to win souls for Jesus?

CLIMBING THE ROMAN ROAD STEP 1 & 2 (THE BROKEN HEART/SIN PROBLEM)

 

     Do you think people are born with innate goodness in them—as many people claim? Or do people have broken hearts as a result of sin as the Bible claims, even though they may not realize it—or won’t admit it? Here are a couple of Bible verses that contradict the assertion that people are born with innate goodness.

1. In the first verse Jeremiah says the following in chapter 17, verse 9:

“The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?”

(Jeremiah said that the hearts of people aren’t just a little bit wicked—but they are “desperately wicked” and deceitful. In other words, instead of people being innately good, they are innately wicked and sinful. The internet cite “Got Questions” compares the sinfulness of man to being born with a “terminal, incurable illness”.)

2. In the second verse Paul wrote in Romans 1:29-32 the following about the sinfulness and depravity of mankind: 

“They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, and wickedness. They are full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, senseless, untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful. Although they know God’s just sentence—that those who practice such things deserve to die—they not only do them, but even applaud others who practice them.”

(Wow! Paul makes it clear that mankind is unquestionably wicked and they “deserve to die”. He wasn’t talking just about a physical death however, but an eternal death in hell.)

     I’ll use myself as an example. Almost 48 years ago I had a good job and plenty of money. Everything seemed to be going A-Okay. But, what I also had was an incurable ache in my heart, a broken heart if you will, that nothing could satisfy. What was causing the incurable ache?

  It’s been said repeatedly and almost ad nauseam, “To solve a problem, the first step is to realize that you have one.” This statement seems like old-hat, but it is so very true when it comes to every person having a broken heart as a result of sin.

     I don’t want to imply that we have the ability in ourselves to cure our own aching, broken heart. The aching, broken heart in us is just a fact—and it’s something for which WE have no answer. We need someone else to tell us about it, and tell us the solution for the cure. That someone else is God!

     God can, however, use other Christians to tell or show us how to help our broken heart. He can use an evangelistic service. He can use difficult circumstances—and a myriad of other things too deep for us to understand. He can even use a gospel tract.

     What I like about The Roman Road gospel tract I created is that it uses Paul’s writings in Romans to simply and clearly outline the problem of sin, and the aching, broken heart it produces. And then Paul simply and clearly tells us the remedy to heal our heart. Let’s look at the first two steps.

Step 1: The Roman Road tract shows at the foot of the road a broken heart as a result of sin. The verse that coincides with the picture of a broken heart as a result of sin is Romans 3:23:

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

(So the first step to solving the broken heart/sin problem is to realize that you and I are born very sinful and wicked beyond repair on our own.)

Step 2: The Roman Road Tract shows a gravestone a short way up the road with the word “Die” on it. The verse that coincides with the gravestone is the first part of Romans 6:23:

“For the wages of sin is death.”

(Paul asserted that to be born with sin means certain death. Again, Paul wasn’t just talking about a one-time physical death. He was talking about a forever death in hell.)

    So, we’ve covered the first two steps on the Roman Road tract. I hope and pray it has been meaningful to you. God’s ways are very mysterious and deep, but I think He is very wise to reveal them clearly in the Bible—so even a child can understand them. Recognizing our brokenness and our broken heart as a result of sin for which we have no answer is the first step toward God. And then, the second step is to recognize that our sin leads to death—eternal death in hell.

     See you the next time when we’ll cover the next two steps of The Roman Road tract.