Make Defeat Your Fuel
I saw a Gatorade commercial recently. It started with Michael Jordan telling a story of how he missed the varsity basketball team in high school. It’s followed with other well known players telling their story of failure. The commercial wraps up with Matt Ryan doing drills, he was the quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons who blew the biggest lead in super bowl history and lost to the Patriots.
He said DEFEAT was his FUEL.
If all you do is WIN WIN WIN (insert song here) you won’t have a depth and strength to overcome when the challenging seasons come. And trust me the seasons will come where all you know is DEFEAT and LOSS.
Winning is amazing, I love it. I hate losing but I can tell you from personal experience that my best successes have come off the hardest DEFEATS.
No character in the Bible succeeds without sacrifice or defeat — our lives are no different. The story goes that one of the greatest basketball players of today, Steph Curry, grew up going to games with his Dad, who also happened to be a professional basketball player.
His dad played a few seasons in Toronto. Another great player happened to be on the team, Vince Carter, who will go down in NBA history. Most nights after warm up Vince would play Steph in a game of one on one. He never let Steph win — or score a point.
Now Steph is arguably the best shooter and has changed the game as we know it. I wonder how many of his now victories are found in the defeats of his youth?
I believe it’s the same for you and me — our past defeats aren’t fatal but they are the proving ground for success.
So I agree with Gatorade. Make DEFEAT your FUEL.
Philippians 4:13 “For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.”
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