To this day, Leah O’Brien-Amico remembers the phone call. It came a decade ago, but it seems like yesterday. It was in the morning. O’Brien-Amico, who was at the time still in the process of building her softball-legend status as part of the U.S. National Team, was standing in the lobby of a hotel chatting with some teammates.

She was in a good mood; it was a joyful time. An Olympic gold medal-winning athlete, O’Brien-Amico had just wrapped up her final season at the University of Arizona, where her team had won the College World Series about a month earlier. It was the third national title Arizona had won while she was there.

Part I
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One of the reasons Olympic athletes are so successful is that they are constantly training for an event. They spend most of their lives training for future competition. In fact, most athletes spend more than 90 percent of their time training for competition and less than 10 percent actually competing.

They train with tremendous focus and purpose because every day is important. Missed workouts are not an option. They have a goal in sight, which serves as a motivator and constant reminder that they need to stay on track if they are going to have future success.

Try for a second to imagine not being able to publicly praise your Holy Father in Heaven.

Imagine being so on fire for Jesus Christ and His amazing sacrifice on the cross and wanting to tell every person you met but, because of fear of persecution or deportation, you couldn’t open your lips.
 
Imagine that governmental supervision was required when assembling in large groups to discuss all Christ has done, all the grace He showers upon us.

Tucked neatly between peaks of California’s San Bernardino Mountains is the quiet reservoir town of Big Bear Lake, population 5,500. It is a cozy ski resort town full of log-cabin charm, the kind of place that begs visitors to forget that the turbulence of Hollywood sits at its feet only 100 miles away.

It was in this quiet town that an Olympic quest began. U.S. marathon runner Ryan Hall was only 14 years old when he stared out at the lake through his parents’ car window and was filled with a vision — a vision to run.

Randy Swearengin was a rookie FCA area representative, newly hired to a full-time position in Mississippi, when he entered a coach’s office in his district one morning armed with a box of Bibles and a heart determined to impact local coaches and athletes for Christ.

He had recently purchased the box of FCA Coach’s Bibles with his own money and was planning to hand-deliver them to every local coach as way of introducing himself. This particular coach, however, known for being tough and hard-nosed on and off the field, would have nothing of it.

Our defeats are seldom instantaneous. In reality, most of them have been long in the making. And, unfortunately, we often supply the means for our own self-ruin.

There is an old fable about an eagle and an arrow that concludes with the magnificent creature being shot down by a hunter. It is with great pain that the eagle realizes the arrow was made with one of its own feathers. It had essentially brought about its own death.

Water is the single most important nutrient in the body. To be honest, it's impossible to be healthy without water. Yet, even though we know we're probably not getting enough, many of us still don't do anything about it.

"Sexual temptation and purity is a man's issue, not mine."

If you're like millions of women, that thought probably crossed your mind when you read the subhead of this article. And no wonder. On the surface, the evidence is pretty convincing.

In today's world, physical temptations aren't often geared toward women. Strip clubs, X-rated magazines and Internet pornography mainly target men. So, it is justifiable to assume that men are the only ones who deal with sexual impurity, right?

Wrong.