Sport-Specific Contexts
Ninety minutes wasn’t enough. Extra time wasn’t enough. And now the most team-oriented sport in the world is going to be decided by the most individual act in sport: one player, one goalkeeper, twelve yards, one kick.
The team that played together for a hundred and twenty minutes is about to watch individuals carry the full weight of the outcome one at a time. That is genuinely one of the strangest and most revealing situations in all of sport.
Read this passage slowly.
Be still, and know that I am God.
Psalm 46:10 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
Be still and know. The instruction is not: feel nothing. It is: stop the frantic internal movement long enough to access what is actually true. The knowledge of who God is does not arrive in the anxious scramble. It arrives in the stillness. And that stillness is available even in the twelve yards of a penalty shootout — especially there, because there is nothing left to do but be still and know and then step up and kick.
The penalty kick is the purest test of the relationship between preparation and composure. The technique was trained. The run-up was practiced. The goalkeeper has been studied. None of that is available to the kicker in any useful form while they are standing over the ball. What is available is the body that was trained and the mind that is either still or scattered.
The kicker who steps up thinking about the consequence of missing has already made the kick harder than it needs to be. The kicker who steps up with a still mind — who has placed the consequence somewhere other than the twelve yards between them and the goal — is in the best position the moment allows.
For the team waiting: your job is simpler than you think. Be present. Be together. The outcome does not determine what this team is. What this team is will be true regardless of what the next kick produces.
The kicker who steps up thinking about the consequence of missing has already made the kick harder. The still mind places the consequence somewhere else and kicks. Be still. Then kick.
For the kickers: what is the one thought you want in your mind when you step up? For the team: what is your job for each other in the next few minutes regardless of the outcome?
Brief and activating. The two questions are for the kickers and for the team separately. Let both answer.
Be still. Know. Then step up and kick.
This devotional is for the moments before a penalty shootout. Keep it under 8 minutes. End it and let the team be together in the stillness before the kicks begin.
The second half of the teach — the team’s identity being independent of the outcome — is also useful as a post-shootout reflection regardless of result.