Parents, I have a new scorecard. When I was in college, I decided to try out to be a cheerleader. I was hyper, loud, liked to encourage people and liked to hang out with pretty girls…I thought “those are my people!” When I started out, I was terrible, I dropped my poor cheer partner, I couldn’t tumble and really had no idea what I was doing. The next year, by the industry of one of the other cheerleaders, we got a coach. He was one of the best coaches I ever had in all the sports I had tried. He trained us well. We went from an okay squad to a squad that competed in the Ford College Cheerleading Championships my senior year. It was a great story of growth and development… There were some talented cheerleaders with great hearts for cheerleading, but we really didn’t have a lot of skills or direction. Then our coach came and gave us a new scorecard, we understood what we were supposed to be doing and why we were doing it and based on the scorecard, we knew when we were doing it well. It drove us to train hard, grow and become better cheerleaders.
A few years ago, I read a book that gave me a new scorecard. It helped me better understand the most important book, the Bible. It helped me more firmly grasp what we live for and why we do what we do as believers. I had grown up in church, heard all the sermons, and read the Bible. I had even been to seminary, but didn’t always have a clear vision of what is most important. This book spoke in plain terms that gave me an even clearer scorecard for life. Something practical “clicked” for me as far as living out my faith. The book was RARE Leadership by Warner and Wilder. It reminded me that relationships are THE most important, because we were created for relationships from the beginning. Sure, there are things God wants us to KNOW and DO, but His biggest concern is that we LOVE Him and other people well. R.A.R.E. reminds us to: Remain relational, Act like yourself, Return to Joy, and Endure hardship well. So, the scorecard for me became:
Am I Remaining relational or have other things, thoughts, tasks become more important to me?
Am I Acting like the new creation Jesus made me, or am I acting like my old self?
Am I Returning to Joy and glad to be with people or am I operating out of fear?
Am I Enduring hardship well or am I passing my suffering on to others?
Am I Acting like the new creation Jesus made me, or am I acting like my old self?
Am I Returning to Joy and glad to be with people or am I operating out of fear?
Am I Enduring hardship well or am I passing my suffering on to others?
If I don’t use this scorecard, I can quickly lose sight of the fact that I am not living relationally at all. Fear brings my selfish, self-protective, self-serving, self-seeking self to the top and that self is anti-relationship, it destroys relationships. The scorecard helps me remember who Jesus has made His people to be, that He is always relational, that He is always glad to be with us, and that He always suffered well for us.
“Jesus (said), “The most important (commandment) is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”Mark 12:29-31 (ESV)
I encourage you to love well, act like your new self, be glad to be with people, and when things get hard, suffer well.
Hang in there people! God is with us! I’m praying for you all!
