The Season Arc
There’s a version of rivalry week where the other team stops being people.
They become an obstacle. An opponent. A symbol of everything you want to beat. The trash talk starts, the history gets recited, the whole story of the week gets written around defeating them.
And it’s worth pausing to notice: when that happens, something in you changes too. Not always for the better.
Read this passage slowly.
But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Matthew 5:44 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
Before you close this out — I know what you’re thinking. Love your enemies? Before a rivalry game?
Here’s the thing: loving your enemy doesn’t mean wanting them to win. It doesn’t mean not competing. Jesus competed — he argued, he pushed back, he didn’t fold. Love in this context means not dehumanizing. Not letting the intensity of the competition turn the person across from you into something less than a person.
There are athletes on that team who worked as hard as you did to get here. Who have coaches they respect, families in the stands, and goals they care about. The rivalry is real. The competition matters. But the person across the sideline is also real.
What does this actually change about how you play? Honestly — nothing and everything. It doesn’t make you compete less hard. It makes you compete differently. You’re not trying to destroy anyone. You’re trying to win a game. Those are different things, and the best competitors know the difference.
The teams that lose themselves in a rivalry — that get so caught up in the animosity that it becomes personal and ugly — almost always underperform because of it. The teams that respect the opponent while beating them play cleaner, sharper, and more freely.
Compete with full intensity. Win if you can. But keep the humanity in it. That’s not weakness. That’s exactly the kind of strength Proverbs 16 was talking about.
You’re not trying to destroy anyone. You’re trying to win a game. The best competitors know the difference.
Have you ever competed against someone and come away with more respect for them, not less? What made that possible? What does it look like to bring that into this week?
This question may feel counterintuitive in rivalry week. That’s intentional. Let the tension sit. Don’t rush to resolve it.
Compete with everything you have. Keep the humanity in it. Both.
Some athletes will initially resist this devotional. Stay with it. The point isn’t to reduce intensity — it’s to elevate the quality of the competition. That usually lands once they hear the full teach.