Mini-Series
The word faith gets used in locker rooms a lot. On shirts, in speeches, in the things people say before and after competition.
I want to talk about what it actually means. Not the cultural version. The real thing.
And I want to start by saying: wherever you are with faith — whether you have a strong one, a skeptical one, or don’t know what you think — this series is for you. You don’t have to believe everything I say to get something from it. Come honest and let’s see what happens.
Read this passage slowly.
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
Hebrews 11:1 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
Confidence in what we hope for. Assurance about what we do not see. Faith, in its biblical definition, is not the absence of doubt. It’s a posture toward what can’t yet be proven — a decision to live as if something that isn’t fully visible is real enough to act on.
Athletes live by a form of this constantly. The training that produces results that aren’t visible yet. The process trusted before the harvest arrives. The team believed in when the record doesn’t yet confirm it. Those are all forms of confidence in what is hoped for and assurance about what is not yet seen. Faith, at the structural level, is something every serious competitor understands.
The specifically religious version of faith is the same structure applied to the largest questions: who am I, what am I here for, what happens when things go wrong, is there something larger than me that I can trust? The confidence in those things is what a living faith actually is. Not certainty. Confidence. The decision to act on it.
Over the next three weeks, we’ll look at what that kind of faith actually produces in an athletic life. Today is the foundation: understanding what we’re actually talking about.
Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we cannot yet see. Athletes practice this structure every time they trust a process before it produces results.
Where does your faith — whatever form it takes — currently give you confidence in what you can’t fully see or prove? Name it specifically.
Accessible to athletes at all points on the faith spectrum. The question doesn’t require a religious answer.
Come honest. That’s all this series asks. Come back next week.
This series is designed to be accessible to athletes across the faith spectrum. Do not assume everyone in the room has an established faith. Deliver it with the openness the introduction models.