One of the greatest attributes of leaders is a desire and obedience to serve others. Jesus communicated that the most important commandment was to love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and then to love others. To put it simply: Love God; love others. Or, to use the old acronym for J.O.Y.: Jesus, Others, You.

According to Jesus, we should be third. Jesus referred to others as “neighbors,” which refers to whomever is next to you (even the teammate or person on your staff you don’t really care for). What we need to understand is that people don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care. The easy way out would be to hate your coach if you are not getting the playing time you think you deserve. The opposite of the hatred you feel is love, and that is what Jesus is commanding us to do.

Maybe your coach or teammate has a love deficit. When those situations happen, we must look past their behavior and capture their hurting hearts. As people of faith, we think we need to "do good things." Jesus said to love others out of the overflow of our love for Him. In a similar train of thought, Dr. Martin Luther King said, "Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love."

As we play on our teams or in our sports, we have a challenge ahead of us. Will we align ourselves with the Scriptures? We will not have to look very hard to find someone who needs to be served. We can start by asking someone how we can pray for them. Today, be on the lookout to be the serving hands and feet of Christ. Put yourself behind Him and behind your neighbors and watch as He shows up through you!