In animated tones that mirrored his very vivid gestures, Kamal recounted every shift, dribble, pass, and shot that resulted in his team winning the match. There was however something about the way his pitch decrescendoed and became dispirited that drew my attention to the fact that he was about to talk about something that meant a lot more to him. “Mommy,” he said, “the opposing coach called me over after the match and congratulated me for winning, he said I was a good player but that I needed to work on using my left hand more. He is right, I really do need to work on that.”
Fast forward a couple days later as his team competed against another prominent high school. “I am free,” he shouted to his teammate who passed the ball with confidence to his captain. Dribbling the ball down the court he increasingly picked up momentum as he headed towards his goal, before he arrived there, my focus was drawn to the opposing coach who threw his hands wildly in the air beckoning his players’ attention and yelling, “come on guys, he’s right-handed, he can’t go left, he can’t go left, force him left,”. Following the instruction dutifully the opposing team made it increasingly difficult for Kamal to make it to the goal.
“Time-out!, Time-out!” yelled Coach. The FWEEEEET!!! of the referee’s whistle was quickly followed by Coach signaling his young players to huddle around him. I couldn’t hear what was being said but noticed that Coach was frantically drawing on his play-board so I surmised that he was adjusting the plays. The huddle broke in tandem with the whistle’s blow to signal the teams back on the court and the game back in session.
With mere seconds left to go, I watched with bated breath to see if the team could make necessary adjustments to make good on the instructions Coach had given them. Effortlessly number 10 who loomed above his opponent stole the ball away and passed it to his captain as customary. Taking the ball Kamal drove hard toward the goal but was blocked by the human wall created by the bodies of the opposing team. “Settle and look!” yelled Coach whose timely instruction refocused Kamal to a teammate who was made available by the tactics of the opposition. Passing the ball, Kamal beamed as he watched his teammate make good on the basket to the thunderous applause of the audience and the ire of their opponents.
It is said that all is fair in love and war but full disclaimer my momma bear came out during this game and I became indignant about the fact that the opposing coach had the nerve to openly and unashamedly exploit my baby’s weakness. Ok! ok! so that’s a game but do we realize that this is exactly what the enemy does to us Christians. He openly and unashamedly exploits our weaknesses. I am not sure about you but that makes me extremely livid!. People of God let us call a Holy Ghost time out, get a coach/pastor/counsellor/friend and work on coming up with new strategies to defeat the enemy of our souls.
Unfortunately and with deep regret I must also report that Kamal’s team did not win the match. But that’s on us because a few days before we got the prompt to work on his weakness. We acknowledged it but didn’t become intentional enough about working on it.
Let us do an assessment to see what can we learn from this situation:
- I believe that the Holy Spirit will speak to us about our weaknesses. For some it may be the fact that we are doing drugs, watching pornography, or having sex outside of marriage, for others it may be the type of friends that we are associating with, our indifference to the things of God, or the foul language that we have become accustomed to using. Maybe for you it is anger, pride or even covetousness, for each of us it will be something different but the important thing is when we get the prompt about our weakness we need to be intentional about doing something about it.
- The enemy does not play fair. He has no qualms about using our weaknesses against us openly. This means we have to recognize his tactics early and come up with appropriate strategies to counter him beforehand. This will require us to get a coach or some may call it, an accountability partner to help us strategize in order to come up with some adjusted plays that can be used when the enemy is targeting us.
- Time is running out and we can’t afford to lose so we do not have much time to work on the adjustments. The stakes are high and any delay could cost us our very souls.
Everyone who competes in the games trains with strict discipline. They do it for a crown that is perishable, but we do it for a crown that is imperishable.
WRITTEN DELIVERANCE 