Elite Series
When the money arrived, some people arrived with it.
Not all of them are bad people. Some of them are family who genuinely love you and are in a difficult situation. Some of them are friends from before who don’t know how to navigate the change in your financial situation and default to asking. Some of them are people you had never met who now have a business opportunity that is specifically suited to your situation.
And some of them are people whose interest in you is primarily financial, even if it doesn’t look like that from the inside.
Read this passage slowly.
A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
Proverbs 18:24 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
A friend who sticks closer than a brother. The contrast is between the many companions — the crowd that accumulates around a person in a position of resource — and the friend whose connection is not contingent on the resource. Finding the difference between those two categories is one of the most important and most difficult tasks the financially elevated athlete faces.
The relational landscape around significant money is complicated in ways that most formation contexts don’t prepare people for. Family relationships are the most complex. The parent or sibling whose financial need is real, whose love for you is also real, and whose ask puts you in the position of choosing between your financial judgment and your family loyalty — that is a specific kind of pressure that the game never produced.
The useful questions are not about whether to help people you love. They are about clarity: who was here before the money? Who has shown up since? What is the nature of the connection with the new arrivals? Is the relationship primarily about you or primarily about what you have?
You do not have to answer those questions alone. The trusted advisor — the chaplain, the financial counselor, the mentor who has been in this specific situation — is the person for this conversation. Find that person before the decisions get made, not after.
Who was here before the money? Who has shown up since? Those two lists tell you something important about the relational landscape you are now living in.
Name one relationship in your life that the money has complicated. What is the complication and who can you talk to about it that has no financial interest in your situation?
The trusted third party question is the practical action item. Help the athlete identify who that person is.
Find the friend who sticks closer than a brother. That relationship is worth protecting from the ones that arrived with the money.
This devotional is best delivered in a trusted one-on-one or small group context. The relational complications it addresses require safety to discuss honestly.