Chains For Christ

Philippians 1:12-30

It's been a while since I've written in here and I apologize for those who's been reading (I've had a couple people tell me what happened). I have a whole bunch I want to enter as an entry because I did do a couple interesting studies and heard some great sermons over my Winter Break. I will make sure to do that as I get better at doing this.

Hope your breaks have gone well. Mine has been relaxing and I've actually been to a lot of places meeting people I haven't seen in a long time. This includes many family members as one of my cousins just got married.
The passage I want to talk about is actually not one from my continued reading. I actually came across an interesting read over ESPN about Tony Dungy.
For those of you who do not know Tony Dungy, he's the coach of the Indianapolis Colts and he has declared today that he will be retiring. Coach Dungy is known for his strong faith and for being a class-act. And his retirement speech was nothing short of that. He even quoted the Bible and tried to explain how what he wants to do reflects that. I was sad as a Colts fan, but happy as a fellow believer.

Dungy said something in his speech that really made me reflect on how I want to live my life. Hopefully it will for you as well. He quoted the Bible in saying something along the lines of, "'If I live, it's good. If I die and go home with the Lord, it's better.'"

This one little quote got me thinking a lot about how I was living my life thus far. What exactly was I doing? And what was I doing that for? And a lot of this got me to realize that it was for selfish reasons. I am a student now trying to do well in school for what? To live the life that I tried to create based on what everyone has told me was good. I avoided things because people advised me it's bad, and done things because people supported those things. Now, I'm not saying that this is in anyway a bad thing, but when it's the sole foundation for the life I set out to live, it makes me ponder about a lot of things.

The way the society is set today, it's really hard to break out of it. When we're raised as kids, there are certain things that every kid must do to succeed. Once you pass that, you must do the next set of tasks to compete with the rest of the world. That's just the way it seems to work. I'm not saying that a kid should break out of it and not take his SATs. Rather I'm promoting that we start living our lives with a purpose. And as Apostle Paul stated, and Dungy agreed, it's better to live and die with the Lord.

When diving into the text, Dungy was talking about Apostle Paul's message about how he was in chains for Christ and will rejoice living for Him. I know this is a really tough task especially with the motives we have in our lives. However, we have to realize what is truly greater. And that is knowing Christ. That's a challenge I'm going to have to live up to.
Oh and thanks Coach Dungy for the last 7 years of great football. You will be missed.