God has given you the equipment you need to make the most of your life. All you have to do is reach high to heaven and touch low to implement His plan on Earth. In this video from his new Bible Study, No More Excuses, Pastor Tony Evans uses a story from the SuperBowl to illustrate how men are to use their tools here on earth to come out in the second half of their life and live it to God’s glory without making any more excuses.
The entire video is above, and the complete transcript is below.
We’re not going to sit in our easy chair and just play with our remote. We’re not going to just hang around and just wait for something to drop from heaven. We’re going to trust heaven, but we’re going to move on earth.
This is why I love reviewing what happened in SuperBowl XLIII. In SuperBowl XLIII, with just a couple of minutes left, the Pittsburg Steelers were coming down the field and a pass was thrown to Santonio Holmes. He dropped it. He came back to the huddle after having dropped the ball and Ben Roethlisberger called his name again. “We gonna try this again. I know the enemy is stopping you. The enemy is trying to knock down the pass, but we got to win this thing. So we’re not going to hold back. We’re going to go for it. So, Santonio Holmes, you go to the edge of that end-zone and let’s see if we can win this thing in spite of a dropped ball just a few plays ago.”
Santonio Holmes went to the end-zone. Ben Roethlisberger threw him the pass. Santonio Holmes reached high and caught the ball. But he touched low with his feet firmly on the ground in-bounds. Touchdown! The Pittsburg Steelers win the SuperBowl.
You see, for them to win, two things had to happen. The receiver had to reach high and grab the ball, but he had to touch low. If he touched low, but didn’t reach high and grab the ball it would have been an incomplete. But if he reached high, but didn’t touch low with his feet in-bounds, it would have been incomplete.
You see, God is calling men to reach high to heaven. That was God’s arrow. But He’s also calling them to touch low on earth and implement what you’re believing God to do.
Every man has been given tools. Tools of your manhood. And those tools mean you don’t have a right to make excuses. Because He’s given you what every football player has: equipment.
Equipment to handle the attacks that come, the warfare that is coming against you, the pain that you’re experiencing, the defeats that you’ve had.
You need to come out in the second half of your life and you need to say, “Even though I may have fumbled the ball earlier, like Santonio Holmes had done, even though I may have missed the block earlier, even though I may have not thrown the ball correctly earlier, right now I’m going to change the trajectory of my life, my family, my future. Because I’m going to use all the spiritual tools that God has provided me. What are the gifts? What are the talents? What are the skills? What are the opportunities?
That means you gotta get out of that chair. You gotta get out from in front of that television and you gotta decide: “I’m not going to sit in the stands any longer. I’m going to get down on this field and I’m going to play this game.”
I’m going to give God everything I’ve got because I’m going to give God something to work with. And what I’m not going to give Him is anymore excuses. Why I can’t. Why I’m too weak. And why I had a bad pass. And what my father did and where I was abandoned and neglected.
Well, no. No more excuses. Those are realities. You acknowledge them. They cannot be just dismissed from your mind. But what you can’t do is use that as a reason for not now taking everything God has given you.
