There's a great scene in the classic movie Hoosiers where the aging coach, portrayed by Gene Hackman, leads his young team onto an empty court hours before the state championship. The intimidating arena was something the young team from Hickory had never dreamed of, let alone seen.

As the team's collective jaw dropped at the enormity of the venue, Coach quietly took out a tape measure to determine the distance from the basket down to the floor. With the team huddled around him, Coach revealed that the measurements matched those of their humble court back home, and the kids quickly realized the lesson: No matter how daunting or unexpected the surroundings, the standards of the game remain the same.

As we wake up the dawn after the long weekend, let's measure it. When we evaluate our life and health against God's Word, we're guided -- some toward better habits of physical stewardship and others perhaps toward less self-admiration. Dr. Charles Stanley says, "One of Satan's strategies is to get our minds so occupied with peripheral concerns that we compromise our reliance upon Christ."

You know, as fitness-minded believers we can get so caught up in how we look that we never see the battlefield. And others of us have neglected our health so much that we can't reach it. But grace, the most humble of motivators, changes us. It frees us from us.

What a perfect chance to measure out the day against life's only true standard. When we do, our collective jaw will drop because none of us measures up. None of us. Our eyes are opened. God is too good, too big, and too incredible for us to either sit idle or to be full of ourselves. Let's determine today that we will play the game of life with both absolute reliance and radical humility.

--Jimmy Peña

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