"Hey dummy, why did you take your helmet off?"

Freshman year of college, day four of two-a-day practices second day of full pads and contact. I was getting the best of our All-Conference nose tackle, who was one of the Quad Captains on our football team. The thing was that he knew it and so did the coaches, his job was to get triple teamed to allow the Sam and Will linebackers to roam freely and attack the ball. I was dominating him alone so our two guards were able to peel off and get to the second level and interrupt the linebackers. A big No- No if you are a defensive player.

I should have seen it coming but I head no idea. After a particularly successful 10 yard run right up the middle and after picking himself up off the ground yet again, our beloved nose tackle and captain took it upon himself to shove me in the back while I was walking back to the offensive huddle.

This was college football, it might as well have been prison, the rules are the same- you are new and fighting for your life and respect. So I walked back to the huddle and the coach looks at me and says, "What are you doing?", "Why didn't you hit him?". Shortly after practice he pulled me into the office   and explained to me that standing up for yourself and going right back at the older players was the only way to get respect. He told me next time it happens, I needed to respond.

The next time didn't take too long, it was the next day. First play of practice- 52 Center Trap; I destroyed him, he shoved me in the back again and walked back to his huddle. This time without thinking I took off running full speed, I literally left my feet and hit that man harder than anything I had ever hit in my life! His head snapped back and he dropped, as a matter of fact, he really dropped! He had to be helped off of the field and he was out for the next several plays.

I knew what was coming next, the coaches knew what was coming next, he knew what was coming next. IT WAS ON!!! As Captain and one of the leaders of our team, this insubordination from a freshman could not go unanswered. The fight was coming...

He trotted back onto the field, we didn't even call a play in the huddle coach walks over and says to me  "hey man, with your wrestling background, you need to get this to the ground, his reach is twice yours" He was 6' 4', I was 5'9". Okay, I got it. Ground = winning the fight, I could do that!

 As soon as we broke the huddle I could see him tightening his gloves and buckling the 4th snap on his helmet. As soon as I got into my stance he jumped off-sides and shoved me to the ground and followed it up with a few four letter adjectives he used to describe me. He then motions for me to get it.

Never one to back down from a fight, I willingly got up, I was ready to nail this dude, so I threw my helmet off to get ready, then it happened...

A minute or two later I was awakened by our trainer giving me that horrible smelling stuff to wake me up. I had a horrible headache and blood was gushing out of my nose and mouth. For a minute, while laying there I had no idea what happened, so I asked the trainer and he said you got headbutted!

What? headbutted? Really? After a few more minutes I was helped up, my nose was stuffed with cotton, and I saw the coach walking over to me. I remember feeling angry that this guy "wussed out of fighting me like a man"  now this guy, team captain or not he was going to get his, no coach on any team would put up with something like that. Or so I thought.

Coach walks up and he says... "Hey dummy, why did you take off your helmet?" looks at me, looks at trainer and asks "is it broken?" trainer says "nope" and says "get back to practice, no more fighting".

WOW. That was it! As soon as he saw me throw off my helmet he "leaped" into action from what I had been told. To this day, I have no recollection off the headbutt itself. Although, to date I have had two nose surgeries, LOL.

Twenty plus years later as reflect back on that incident, I realize that I lost my chance of winning that fight the moment I threw off my helmet and gave my opponent a sizable advantage over me, which he took full advantage of. That wasn't on him, it was on me.

We as Christians give our enemy a sizable advantage over us when we focus on our problems and not on God's faithfulness. I cannot begin to tell you how much of my coaching time is taken up by business leaders talking about their problems and how they are struggling. Lets face it when we hit tough times it is a natural tendency to focus on the problem and the desire to want to share it with others.

The problem with that is that it only compounds our problems, the problem with problems is not the problem itself but the length of time we suffer through that problem- that is what weakens us. Most of us are strong enough to endure for a short time but any longer than that we become stretched and despair begins to set in and we take to blaming God or others for our current situation.

The question becomes, as Christians how do we handle problems and situations that arise? How do we keep our faith in the midst of the marital problems, financial stress, low cash flow, and heath scares?

The answer lies within this scripture...

"We overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony" (Rev 12:11). We must realize that the battle was won that day on Calvary through the innocent shed blood of our Savior. If we have the victory through the blood, how do we get it to manifest in our situations? First we need to realize that these problems and situations are allowed by God into our lives. We know that God will never give us more than we can handle otherwise he would be a liar..."There is no temptation, test or trial taken you but such is common to man, but God is faithful, he will not suffer you to be tested, tempted or tried beyond what you can endure but will with every temptation, test or trail make a way of escape " (1 Cor 10:13) These events are allowed to come into to our lives because they will draw us closer to God, in order to see victory we have to come to the end of our own strength so we find the beginning of Gods. We must take our focus off of our problems and place that focus or attention on the solution which is Jesus Christ. Easier said then done, right?

Our enemy would love nothing more than to have Christians holed up having a 24/7 pity party and sharing with the entire world all of their problems, why? Its very simple, if you lose your testimony, you lose your witness!


What I mean, is the single biggest reason you are still alive is because your ministry (the call of God on your life-whatever he has called you to do and be) is not finished, you still have work to do. If you spend your time focusing on your problems you have nothing left in the tank for other people.

That is important because as a Christian our lives are designed to be used as living and breathing testimonials of living victoriously through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. If all we are doing is confessing our "issues" and living from one problem to another how does God get the glory from that?

Simply put, he doesn't. What God gets glory in is our faith and how we respond and draw closer to him in the middle of those storms of life. How I personally do that is to thank God for his goodness and to focus on the past answers to prayer that I have received.

How I do that is I go back and read my Answer Book. The Answer Book is something that my family and I have been doing for years. Every time we receive and answer to prayer we write the whole situation down in our Answer Book and date it. We do this to celebrate the goodness and faithfulness of God, to instruct our children in prayer and keep a record of our answers to prayer in order to use the next time those pesky storms of life flare up again.

I cannot tell you how freeing and life giving it is to go back and read our struggles from 2010 and see how God showed up and answered our prayer, it is literally a shot of faith in the arm that brings instant encouragement! Once I read the Answer Book, I just begin to thank God for his faithfulness and I always walk away lifted up because I realize that whatever problem or situation is the flavor of this month, God has brought me through worse than this. I just need to stay in Faith, confess the victory and wait patiently for the lord and  go about encouraging and blessing others in his name.

Your answer to prayer will come, I promise. Focus on God and his faithfulness, thank him in advance for your answer, if you do not already have your own Answer Book, start your own, you will not be sorry.

Once you begin to focus on God instead of your problems, your eyes will be opened and you will begin to be sensitive to the needs of others around you and you can get back to the reason you are still here... To bless and minister to those people around you who need to have the love of Jesus and the Joy of the lord that you experience daily.

This is truly where the Maturation process in our relationship with Jesus is formed, can we in the midst of our own struggles, issues and problems still allow the Holy Spirit to use us to bless other people? The young or immature Christian cannot get beyond their own issues to see the needs of others around them. They shut down, lose their fruit, stop tithing, going to church, reading their Bible and before you know it, they are living in sin and fall further away from the lord. This is one of the biggest reasons why Christianity has fallen on hard times in the world today. Too many Christians focused on themselves and caught up in the cares and worries of the world(otherwise known as the Laodicean Church spoken of in the book of Revelation 3:14).

God always shows up for his people! Creating your own Answer Book will ensure you never forget that in the future, It will help you increase your faith and witness in tough times, something all of us can use.