4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. 5 Let your reasonableness[d] be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
-Philippians 4:4-7
I played Goalkeeper for most of my soccer career, and I don’t think people often realize the amount of pressure one feels when in goal. Whether it touches every defender on the team or none at all, if the ball goes in the goal, a goalie takes it personally. The pressure to protect the goal is overwhelming. But nothing really prepares you for the anxiety one feels when lining up to defend a penalty kick (PK), especially in the case of a tie. It’s hard to clear your head, its hard not to worry about letting your team down. But there is not a lot you can do except study the kicker and make an educated guess on which side to dive. I’ve saved a lot of PK’s in my life but I’ve also got scored on more than I can count. But what I’ve learned over the years is that worrying doesn’t help, and often times makes you overthink and mess up. I played better when I just ignored the anxiety and just played the game.
And life is like that a lot. We have things that we are worried about, pressure to do well in school or at your job, or on the field. We can worry about the state of the country, or all the bad things that happen. We can worry about our friends or family. Just about anything can cause us to worry. But unlike soccer where its best to simply ignore the anxiety, God tell us we can bring it to him and trust him to help us with it. When we read Philippians 4 we are reminded of 3 things to help us combat the worry in life.
The first thing is to rejoice. One of my favorite coaches growing up always asked us 2 questions after every game. What went well, and what can we work on? Often times we only focus on the negative, and that can easily bring us down. But when we focus on the positives it can change how we see things. When we rejoice, we are finding something to be happy about. When we can always see something positive, it will help us not to worry about all the negative things in life.
The second thing is that we are to pray to God rather than be anxious. When we go to God with the things that we are worried about we are able to see that we cant fix them on our own or even at all and need help. So, when you are worried and cant seem to handle something, give it to God and trust his plan over your own.
And when we do that, it bring us to the third thing; the peace of God. When we trust God, we have peace. There are going to be things that make us anxious, worried, or sad. And often times we cant fix them or change them. But we can trust in God’s plan and find the peace that come from knowing He is in control and cares for us.
As always, if you have any question about your faith or how to have a relationship with Jesus, I would love to talk with you about it!
-Coach Nick