Think of all the great moments in sports history. The game is on the line; time is winding down; someone rises to make a heroic play. The team that no one accounted for makes a championship run. The athlete who was told his career was finished bounces back from a catastrophic injury to play again at a high level. The coach who dealt with gut-wrenching heartbreak after being fired from her last team leads a new team to break school records.
Often, great performances in sports illuminate our heart’s desire to overcome life’s difficulties. Beyond the scoreboard, you may regularly confront setbacks and hardships in your personal life and marriage. Yet, why is it that when you scroll through social media or look at your peers, everyone else seems to perform better through these things?
During Jesus’ ministry, the religious leaders focused intently on their religious performance. Under the Old Covenant, the Israelites were justified before God based on their ability to uphold the law. God gave rules, commands, and statutes for His people to follow so they could separate from the culture and exclusively devote themselves to Him. Over time, what was meant to spur internal change morphed into external rules and traditions, some God-given, others man-made. It became prideful and self-seeking.
Jesus continually challenged the religious leaders’ public performances of religion. He cut through the fluff and got to the real issue – the heart motives. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but are inside full of bones of the dead and every kind of impurity. In the same way, on the outside you seem righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matthew 23:27–28). The facade was exposed. Performance without substance was just a show.
As a disciple of Jesus, you never need to perform to gain God’s approval. Those who have received Him as Lord and Savior are forever in right standing with God (Romans 5:2). Jesus’ performance on your behalf forever solidified your place in God’s family. He adopted you as a son or daughter (Galatians 4:4–5). There’s nothing you did to make Him love you, and you can do nothing to earn (or lose) His love in the future (Romans 8:38–39).
It’s from this place—an unshakable foundation of your identity in Christ—that you are empowered to “perform.” Life with Jesus is not about what you do (the external); it’s about embracing who you are (the internal). As Dr.Neil Anderson writes, “It is not what you do as a Christian that determines who you are; it is who you are that determines what you do.”
Coaching creates ever-increasing demands that can take a toll on your marriage. There’s less time and attention for what matters most. And then maybe add other family issues: trouble with a wayward child, difficulties conceiving, an unimaginable financial crisis, intimacy issues that are unspoken but felt ...The challenges may seem overwhelming.
How do you and your spouse cope? Are you trying to figure out life and marriage on your own? Have you considered what God may be doing in you through these challenges? How is He working in you and your spouse to take you to a deeper dependence and surrender to Him? God wants to do something in you before He does something through you—that is Greater Performance.
God is passionately committed to transformation—for you, your spouse, and your marriage. Greater Performance is always about the “who” rather than the “do”—who you are becoming in Christ rather than what you do. When a husband and wife embrace the greater call to remain in Jesus, the fruit will come, and it will come abundantly.
According to John 15:5, what does God want from you regarding Greater Performance?
Where does your heart go when things don’t go right (comparison, resignation, more effort, attempts to “numb” the pain)?
In each topic:
Share what you believe God is requiring you to become more than your title as a coach and how it impacts your family.
Share what stood out to you from the stories above in God’s Word.
As a Christian coaching couple, consider how your performance outside of your sport impacts your faith, family and finances.How can you strengthen your time with God and grow together?
1 Neil T. Anderson, Victory Over the Darkness: Realizing the Power of Your Identity in Christ, 3rd ed. (Ventura, California: Regal, 2013), 27.