Be the Most Improved:

I just officially finished the cross country season as a coach.  I love being a cross country coach.  I love getting to help young people be stronger runners and stronger people as a whole.  Being a coach at a Christian high school where I was able to read some devotionals and help the students learn how to be better and stronger Christians was also an inspiring and exciting time for me.  I also love getting the chance to run with the students in a small little community. 

To officially end the season, we had our fall sports banquet to honor our athletes from the season.  We as coaches had the opportunity to pick three awards for both the boys and girls from the team who are awarded in the following categories: Leadership, Most Valuable Player, and Most Improved. The plaques have the students name and they get the chance to be recognized in front of their peers. 

I did have a realization while I was hearing the students be honored.  I think it can be very easy to want to receive the reward of Most Valuable Player.  It can be easy to want to be hailed as the best on the team and the ones the coaches most needed during the season.  Leadership is great too.  It is good to know others are looking to you for guidance or you are leading the team to do good things.  However, I think the award deserving high praise is the most improved player.  The most improved is a great award to win and one that I want to continue to win in my everyday life. 

I love being able to see improvement.  For example, when I am running I strive to see improvement in my race times. I always enjoy when I can improve on my time from every run that I do.  I can often get discouraged and to be quite honest, I can be a bit too hard on myself during the times when I am not improving, the times I don’t have the best time or a time that seems as good as previous ones.  I would feel honored to be the most improved, so I can be acknowledged for making better choices and better strides toward being the best I can be.  

I think it is important to focus on growth in all areas of life.  This obviously does not only apply to running or to athletics.  I think it would be great to be the most improved in the workplace. For my particular work at the Job Foundation, I have really tried to improve on my financial literacy lessons for my students.   I have tried to bring in more speakers for experts and more ways to engage the students with the content, especially as our nonprofit has grown.  

There is also, of course, needs to be growth when it comes to our Christian walk or faith.  There are many verses about growing in the knowledge and the love of Christ.  One example is 1 Timothy 4:15-16 which says, “Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by doing so you will save both yourself and your hearers.”  The verses prior remind Timothy to practice the qualities such as in speech, in love, in faith and in purity.  In order to do this, Paul reminds Timothy to immerse himself in the public reading of Scripture, and to the teaching of those wise people among you.  It is a reminder for us to practice spending time learning from the scriptures.  

I do want to make something very clear though.  We are not going to grow and become more wise through our own work, however.  It is only through Christ that we are ever going to grow with more love, more peace, more faith, etc.  Don’t necessarily think through my challenge of wanting to find something to improve on that you need to do this solely through your own abilities.  It is still good to have desires to improve oneself, but again, this can only be through prayer and through constant dedication to God.

Your challenge for the week is to find one area where you want to grow.  What is one thing you think you could better develop, whether this be more patience, more gentleness, more humility, more dedication to certain Godly disciplines such as reading the Bible or daily time in prayer.  Spend time in prayer over these desires to improve and then wait for God to slowly work in you to improve you for the better.