This was our time. My college basketball team had been in the middle of a rough losing streak, but now we found ourselves in a close game with a rival team on their court. This was our time.

After a series of tough foul calls, we were still within reach--down by three with one minute to go. During the timeout, all my coach asked of me was to get open on the wing and skip it to my teammate coming off of a fade screen. No way could I mess this up for my team.

One of the worst feelings in sports is losing after having a big lead. Most of us have been a part of a game in which we got ahead early and then watched a victory slip away. We never see it coming because we become so comfortable with the position we’ve gained that we assume we’re not vulnerable and we slack off. Maybe we play around with the ball in the backfield, or we slow our pace. We might even quit completely or forget some of the fundamentals of the game because of how blind we’ve become.

As athletes, it’s easy for us to find ourselves in situations that we never played out in our minds. Down by 10 in the fourth quarter against a team that didn’t stand a chance against us. Gripping our knee after tearing an ACL right before our senior season started. Left off the roster of the team we thought we deserved to be on. The list goes on and on. But it's how we handle these “speed bumps” of life that set us apart as Christians.

Recently, I was faced with an unexpected speed bump myself as I found myself working on my second round of rehab from knee surgery. (My knee had decided it didn't want to comply to the demands of my coach and the sport I loved.) But having Christ at the center of my life was key in this situation.

Do you remember the first time you scored in sports? Maybe it was a touchdown, a basket, a kill, a home run or a match point. For a lot of us, once it happened, we could hardly resist telling everyone about it.

As we get older, the stakes seem to get higher—the significance greater. Game-winning goals, last-second stops on the goal-line, blocked shots, fourth-quarter buzzer-beaters, walk-off home runs…We’re not playing t-ball anymore. The plays we make as we age can win or lose games and even championships. And if we’re involved in successfully making those plays, it’s often hard to contain our pride. We want to ask people, “Did you hear about what I did?” or, “Did you see my [fill in the blank] play?” It’s so easy to bask in the glory of our own self-righteousness.