Coaches are familiar with famous slogans. We put them on T-shirts and in pictures or paint them on walls to try to motivate our athletes. One famous slogan is, “TEAM, me.” “Team” is capitalized because that’s where everyone’s focus should be. “Me” is in lower case to show that individual goals are secondary to the team goals.

A great slogan for the Christian life could be, “God, me.” It’s easy to understand the concept of a big God because we all know that He is bigger than we are. The hard part is allowing Him to reign over all we do. Because most coaches are competitors and problem solvers, we feel the need to do everything we can for our programs. We put so much pressure on ourselves to have a great program that we sometimes lose perspective and the ability to have fun.

Christians can also feel this way. We put pressure on ourselves to live a perfect life and do all these Christian “things” because we think that’s what it’s about. We get so busy and tired that we lose the joy of knowing Jesus. But God wants our relationship with Him to be a joy, not a burden. Acts 17:25 says that He will give us everything we really need (not necessarily what we want!). In fact, He already has in the person and sacrifice of Jesus Christ! Why, then, do many of us feel like we have to perform all these spiritual deeds when all God wants for us is to believe and trust Him each day? If we’ll focus more on knowing Him and less on doing, we’ll experience the presence of God walking beside us in all we do! Our hearts will be redirected to our real source of joy, and our lives—not a slogan—will reflect that to others!