ELE: Everybody Love Everybody, The Football Story

Well here we go, another edition of the blog of Mr. Tim Shrout.  So for tonights episode, I was reading in 1 Corinthians and came across a section where Paul was talking about christians not suing other christians.  Well seeing as I have never had any issues suing another brother, or anyone for that matter, I will not be talking about suing eachother, rather something I read in this section really hit me on another level.  So first I will post the verse, then I will tell you what I took from it.

1 Corinthians 6:7-8

Actually, then, it is already a defeat for you that you have lawsuits with one another.  Why not rather be wronged?  Why not rather be defrauded?  On the contrary, you yourselves wrong and defraud.  You do this even to your brethren.

So when I read this it hit me how often, as brothers and sisters in Christ that we argue and fight.  Aquiring a strong dislike for eachother.  Sometimes  it stems from church verses church, other times its much more personal.  So to illustrate this point, I am going to tell a story from I believe three years ago.  My church in nor cal, Grace Bible Fellowship got challenged to a game of tackle football against another church, Neighborhood church, a lot of you already are thinking, oh this can't end well!  Well let me tell you, it didn't.  At first we thought it would all be fun and games, then we found out the members from the other church were making bets as to whom they would hurt first!  So this ticked us off, we started talking crap and things did not get better.  Come game time there had already developed an anomosity between the two sides.  Our first drive down the field we scored a touchdown and on the touchdown one of their players was hurt trying to tackle our guy.  So we loved this and started playing a very physical game.  There were plenty of late hits by both sides and several near fights during this game(we won by the way, I had to throw that in).  After the game ended the bad blood was even worse then when it had started.  They challenged us to a second game after, we stupidly decided to accept and started talking more trash.  There was a fight during the second game, and one of their players ended up having their ankle broken during the course of this game(we won this one as well by the way, just had to throw that in as well).  Well the bad blood was extremley high now as might be imagined.  It continued well after the games were done, gossip about people from the other church was being thrown about on both sides.  For years, litterally years, we could not stand eachother and even to this day there is a lot of uncomfortableness whenever we are in the precense of eachother.  We have all grown up quite a bit since then, and while no more angry dwells between the players from these churches, the relationships still have not healed.  I tell you this story because we were all incredibly stupid.  Instead of doing what Paul says, we really hurt a relationship between these two churches.  Instead of fighting with eachother, we should have been united in a common mission to bring Christ to the community.  But from that point on, among those who played in the game it was a case of church against church.  There was no fellowship and no love between us.  That is about as pathetic as it can possibly get for two churches(this was just between the young people who played in the games, not the older, wiser members of the churches).  People looking in from the outside could not see Christs love between us and thus would see nothing different between us and anyone else in the world.  It killed our ability to witness to those who saw this as a result and cut off what could have been a great relationship in Christ with the guys from this church.  This happened  because, instead of being willing to be wronged by our fellow brothers we felt the need to get even(or in our case get ahead).  Why do we Christians need to fight with eachother?  Why can't we demonstrate Gods love when we are wronged?  It damages relationships, hurts our ability to minister to those who see the fudes and offends God.  It is not what He hand in mind for us.  So I want to encourage all of us, myself especially to be willing to be wronged by a brother and not get angry, not react out of anything other then love in these situations.  The world is watching us, God is watching us.  So we should have a strong desire, no matter what the circumstances, to forgive eachother, and not harbor ill will for any wrongs done to us.  If something as stupid as a football game can cause such issues between brothers and sisters in Christ, how much more can other things harm our relationships.  Problems will arise, we will be wronged by our brothers and sisters.  So instead of reacting and trying to get even or get ahead.  Lets show Gods love, even in the hardest of circumstances!

Tim