Goals & Process
You’re not playing as much as you want to play.
Maybe you’re not playing at all. And what you do with that — how you show up in practice, how you behave on the sideline, what you contribute to the team from the role you actually have rather than the one you want — is one of the harder tests of character that sport produces.
Read this passage slowly.
Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.
1 Corinthians 12:12,15 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
If the foot says it is not a hand, it doesn’t stop being part of the body. The body needs the foot. The team needs the athlete in a reduced role. Not performing the starring function — performing the actual function, which is real and has value even when it’s not the most visible one.
What does a bench athlete or a role player actually contribute to a team? More than is usually acknowledged.
They set the standard in practice. The starters’ preparation level is shaped in large part by the quality of competition they face in practice. The bench athlete who brings full intensity creates better starters. That contribution is invisible in the box score and essential to the outcome.
They model how to handle adversity. Every athlete on the team is watching how the bench athlete responds to their situation. The one who handles it with dignity and full commitment teaches the whole team something about how to respond when things don’t go the way you want. That’s leadership.
And they hold the culture. The energy on the sideline, the response to teammates’ successes, the refusal to let personal frustration become cultural poison — those are contributions that winning teams have and struggling teams often don’t.
Your role is real. Perform it fully.
The bench athlete who brings full intensity in practice creates better starters. That contribution is invisible in the box score and essential to the outcome.
What is the actual contribution you can make from the role you currently have? Not the role you want — the one you have. Name it specifically.
Specific and forward-looking. The exercise is naming the real contribution of the actual role.
Your role is real. Perform it fully. The team needs what the foot does.
This devotional is specifically for athletes in reduced roles. Delivering it to starters in the presence of bench athletes can feel tone-deaf. Calibrate the context.