Catching Excellence

If you have read this blog, or know me; you know how much I love football. A few years back, I found an article in Parade Magazine about Bart Starr. In this article, he discusses the impact that Vince Lombardi had on him. I cut part of this article out and keep it in my Bible to this day. The following is taken from this article:

The new head coach of the Green Bay Packers, Vince Lombardi, was addressing the players, who had won only one of their 12 games in the previous year.
"He opened the session by thanking the Packers for allowing him to be their coach," Starr says. "That tells you something about the man. Then he quickly turned to us and said, 'Gentlemen, we are going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because nothing is perfect. But we are going to relentlessly chase it, because in the process we will catch excellence.' He came right up on us, within a foot of us in the front row, and then he said, 'I am not remotely interested in just being good.'"

I use these words to constantly remind me that being good at something, isn't enough to make a difference. Take a look at the state of our nation, and tell me that 1 and 12 doesn't about sum it up. Christians, we have been lulled to sleep, and look at what we have woken up to. Every Godless libertine group that is out there has set their sights on erasing Christianity. Erasing, not trying to find away to coexist, they want to erase it from our history.

We need now more than ever, difference makers. We need Christians who relentlessly chase perfection. By perfection, I mean just that: Jesus said, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." Not because we are under a dictatorial mandate, but because we are keenly aware of the fact that we are carrying the name of Christ with us where ever we go. Excellent Christians make a difference on the world around them. Look at Lottie Moon and Charles Spurgeon, were they perfect? No. But they were excellent Christians. And they were excellent Christians, because the pursued perfection. I flatly do not accept that we as Christians can't do better than we are doing. We can, and we must! The need is too great and the time is too short. Read these words from Paul. Don't chase good, relentlessly chase perfection.