Through the Motions

I don’t usually listen to the radio in the car while I’m driving through the suburbs of Chicago. Typically I try to spend my time praying for FCA needs, Huddle Coaches, student-athletes and other family concerns. But one day, I decided to tune in for some music, and I was so glad I did. I heard a song that pierced my heart in a powerful way. If you listen to Christian radio, you’ve probably heard it. It’s the song by Matthew West called “The Motions.” The chorus goes like this:

I don’t wanna go through the motions.
I don’t wanna go one more day
without Your all consuming passion inside of me.
I don’t wanna spend my whole life asking
“What if I had given everything?”
instead of going through the motions.

That hit me like a ton of bricks. God used the words to show me just how much I had been going through the motions in my life with Christ. Go to church, lead small groups, coach teams, work for FCA, yada, yada, yada… I was guilty as charged of going through the motions. So, when I got to my destination that day, I asked the Lord for His help in becoming a guy who did more than go through the motions of life.

It’s easy to slip up and get complacent. Work gets you down, money gets you down, life gets you down, and, one day, you wake up and look in the mirror and realize that you have wasted a ton of time not being your best. I’m sure we’ve all had days like that, but God desires so much more for us.

Today, if that is you, I challenge you: Don’t go through the motions anymore! Not as an athlete, a coach, a friend, a family member or a Christ-follower. It’s time for you to be what God desires you to be: a sold-out, fired-up, lover of Christ!