If someone walked up to you and asked, “What does it mean to play ‘in the zone’?” how would you respond? What professional athlete comes to your mind when you think about playing in the zone? As an athlete, you have certainly been in the zone at least once. To play in the zone means that you are unstoppable. You are the “go to.” You can’t miss. I think you get the point—when you are in the zone, it is an awesome experience.

What does in the zone mean if you relate it to your spiritual life instead of your sports experience? Have you ever been in the zone spiritually? What does it take to get in the zone? Let’s dig deeper with a few questions based on Ephesians 5:1-10.

After watching Texas quarterback Colt McCoy succeed for four years, not many would have predicted that his college career would end this way. Four years of preparation and hard work. (Five, if you count his time as a redshirt.) Four years of sacrifice and dedication. Four years of hoping and dreaming of hoisting the ultimate trophy. All of it came to one last shot at the national title. By the fifth play of the game, it was over. McCoy went down with a shoulder injury that took him out of the game he’d waited so long to play.

When I got home that day, I reflected on the situation. It would have been so easy for me to be miserable the entire day and grumble at the outcome of the race. I thought back to a time when I’d finished a longer race and had done much better than expected.

The NBA Finals are kicking off tonight. I don’t know about you, but I love to see the key match-ups these games bring. Not just the team match-ups like Lakers and Celtics, who will be competing against each other for the title for the 12th time, but also the player match-ups like Rondo/Bryant and Pierce/Artest.

Even though lacrosse was my primary sport, I loved to play basketball as a kid. I loved to invest hours in front of our driveway hoop over the garage. At 6-foot-1, I didn’t have much height for a forward, so I quickly learned the art and importance of posting up against the defense.

THUD. One. The fierce bite of the whip sunk into Jesus' back.

THUD. Two. A 350-pound Roman guard, unleashing the power of every muscle in his body.

THUD. Three. A short pause, to let the blood ooze and the pain sink in. Forty times would surely kill Him, so they went one less. Then the nine tails. Nine ropes holding the sharpest things they could find. Rusty nails. Baked glass. Jagged razorblades. They all plunged into Jesus' back, mercilessly ripping Him apart and tearing His skin to shreds with force no NFL lineman could hope to muster. They found the roughest thornbush with thorns three inches long pointing in every direction, and they forced it onto His head and ground the thorns into his skull.

That was the easy part.

Splashing furiously, I tried desperately to outswim my younger sister. As I reached through the water with every ounce of strength in my 16-year-old body, my lungs and muscles burned. I looked up at the clock. She’d beaten me…again. I was crushed. The pain my body experienced couldn’t compare to the pain I felt inside—the jealousy and anger and failure. Nothing mattered except the reality that I had lost to my fiercest competitor.

In yesterday’s Impact Play, we talked about the value of a one-word theme for the year. Now, if you are like me, you have done your fair share of year-end goal-setting, but, as time goes by, you begin to feel guilty as you fall short of the goals. For me, I got so frustrated at one point with the whole process of resolutions that I boycotted the whole idea and avoided setting any goals at all. That didn’t work either. Instead, I just felt guilty about being the slacker who didn't set any goals. In both cases, I always wound up feeling defeated.

Over a 32-year stretch of time, Les Steckel has coached championship football at the high school, college and professional levels. As different as each of those experiences has been, there’s one philosophy he has always shared with his players. “I used to tell my players, ‘Let me take you where you can’t take yourself,’” Steckel says. “That requires a willingness to cooperate and be committed.”

Tomorrow, June 26, 2010, thousands will gather at a memorial service to honor the life of legendary coach John Wooden who passed from this life to the next earlier this month. Coach Wooden lived 99 full years. He lived well, died well and understood his eternal fate. He once said, “There is only one kind of life that truly wins, and that is the one that places faith in the hands of the Savior.”