Submission

Legendary West Indian fast bowler Sir Wesley Hall was a strongly-built, larger than life cricketer who played international cricket between 1958 to 1969. His long run-up, fearsome pace bowling, outstanding personality, and exploits on the field, made him one of the most-loved sportsmen to emerge from the Caribbean. In 48 international test matches, Hall took 192 wickets at an average 26.38 runs per wicket.

Wesley Hall became an unforgettable part of cricket folklore having bowled the final nail-biting over in the first ever tied test match in the history of cricket between Australia and the West Indies in 1960. The last Australian wicket fell in the last over of the match with them needing one run to win. Thus, the scores of both teams finished the same (tied). It was a historic moment in the game of cricket

After retiring from the game he loved, Hall served in politics and as an Administrator for West Indies Cricket. He was knighted in 2012.

Wesley Hall's life was dramatically transformed, however, after attending a Christian meeting in 1988 on a trip to Florida. He gave his heart to the Lord that day and eventually answered the call to serve God. After attending Bible college, Hall was later ordained in the Pentecostal Church. He has been a much-loved preacher thereafter at Christian gatherings and at funerals-specifically those of West Indian cricketers.

Possible Preaching Angle:

At his trial before King Agrippa, the Apostle Paul, remembering the call of Jesus on the road to Damascus, said, “So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven” (Acts 26:19). Similarly, when God's call came to the prophet Isaiah, he responded, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isa. 6:8). God places His call on different people in different places. Sir Wesley Hall answered the call of God to serve Him. What about us?

Many American Christians believe they can achieve Christ's kingdom on earth through political means, by dominating the culture. Author Tim Alberta, in his 2023 book The Kingdom, The Power, And The Glory: American Evangelicals In An Age Of Extremism, attempts to get to the core of the issues involved.

He spoke to Pastor Brian Zahnd of Word of Life Church in St. Joseph, Missouri. Zahnd told him:

Christianity is inherently countercultural. That's how it thrives. When it tries to become a dominant culture, it becomes corrupted. This is one major difference between Islam and Christianity. Islam has designs on running the world; it's a system of government. Christianity is nothing like that. The gospels and the epistles have no vision of Christianity being a dominant religion or culture.

Tim Alberta elaborates:

The Bible, as Zahnd pointed out, is written primarily from the perspective of the underdog: Hebrew slaves fleeing Egypt, Jews exiled to Babylon, Christians living under Roman occupation. This is why Paul implored his fellow first-century believers - especially those in Rome who lived under a brutal regime - to both submit to their governing authorities and stay loyal to the kingdom built by Christ. It stands to reason that American evangelicals can't quite relate to Paul and his pleas for humility, or Peter and his enthusiasm for suffering, never mind that poor vagrant preacher from Nazareth. The last shall be first? What kind of socialist indoctrination is that?

Pastor Zahnd considers that the kingdom of God isn't tangible for many Christians: "What's real is this tawdry world of partisan politics, this winner-take-all blood sport. So, they keep charging into the fray, and the temptation to bow down to the devil to gain control over the kingdoms of this world becomes more and more irresistible."

Alberta concludes:

Pastor Zahnd told me he was offended by what the American Church had become. God does not tolerate idols competing for His glory and neither should anyone who claims to worship Him. He said, “You can take up the sword of Caesar or you can take up the cross of Jesus. You have to choose.”

Pastor John Yates III once worked for the British scholar and Bible teacher John Stott. Yates reflected on the time when Stott’s aging and disability started to slow Stott down. Yates says:

Stott spent the last 15 years of his life going completely blind. It began with a small stroke that knocked out the peripheral vision in his left eye, forcing him to surrender his driver’s license. And over the years that followed, this man who wrote more books during his lifetime than most of us will read in an average decade became unable to see the pages in front of him. But that wasn't all. His body grew increasingly weak. He needed more sleep. He was eventually confined to his bedroom.

I spent three years working closely with John when he was in his early 70s. I was in my mid-20s. It was absolutely exhausting. I've never been around another person with a capacity for work as fast as his. He was the most disciplined and efficient man I've ever known. But there he was, years later, now in his 80s and into his early 90s, with his mind as sharp as ever. But then he was unable to do much of anything, except to sleep, eat, and listen out his bedroom window for the call of a familiar bird.

Now I found this personally incredibly difficult to understand. Why would God allow a man like John to suffer the loss of precisely those faculties that made his life so meaningful and has worked so successful, if it just seemed cruel? It would have been better, I thought, for him to die or to suffer from Alzheimer's, because at least then he wouldn't have known what he was missing.

But then I finally begin to understand why John never seemed to complain. That's because God was giving him the gift of absolute dependence. God was showing him that he delighted to offer Stott a dependence on him.

Dr. Joe Carella, Sport Psychology Consultant with the NBA’s Orlando Magic addresses what to do "When you see yourself differently than your boss does."

Anyone who gets drafted in the NBA feels like they're going to be an all-star with a long career ahead of them. Perhaps you think of yourself as a primary scorer, the guy you give the ball to at the end of the game to make the bucket to win. The coach, however, sees you primarily as a defensive player. You can either fight or accept that.

I work with the players to accept their coach's vision and to develop the skills to excel in that role. If you don't take advantage of the opportunity you're given, you may regret it for a long time. Interestingly, this is much less of a problem with veteran players. When you're a rookie who might not want to recognize or accept your limitations, it's hard. Unfortunately, the guys who don't develop greater self-awareness are more likely to resist change, and their NBA careers are shorter and don't match their potential. But the players who find a way to be dependable while embracing the challenge of changing perceptions are the ones with long, fulfilling careers.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the Christian walk, our "Coach" ultimately decides what position we will play and our role on his team. His vision for our life is always the right one. Leaning into it, and not wasting our time trying to be someone else, is the best was to find true success.

Military policeman Danny Brown was working at the massive Fort Jackson Army Base in Columbia, South Carolina when late at night he saw a truck going 13 miles over the speed limit. He pulled it over and asked the driver, dressed in civilian clothes, for ID. He didn’t recognize the driver, who said nothing as he handed over his ID.

Brown had already decided to give the driver a 1408 warning ticket, which doesn't go on the offender's record but does go right to the company commander. To his surprise, the ID indicated the driver’s rank was "07"—a one-star general. Brown writes:

I'm a Pfc - private first class, the third lowest rank in the Army. My primary job is to carry out orders by commanding officers. And here I am writing a ticket to a general. I decided to treat him as I would anyone else and hold him the same set of rules. I walked up to the truck and saluted him. “I didn't recognize you, sir,” I said. Then I handed him the ticket. “Sir, that ticket is going back to the highest command in your unit, which is, well, you. So, when you get back tomorrow, you're going to explain to yourself why you were speeding.”

The general laughed and thanked him, but early the next morning Brown is suddenly worried and stressed. Two MPs in full uniform entered his room and told him that the colonel, who was the police chief of the base, wanted to see him right away. Brown told them he'd be there in a minute, but the MPs insisted, "You're coming with us right now."

Brown was certain he would get chewed out for giving a ticket to a general. "It happens all the time - someone of higher rank trying to intimidate, talk down, or lay into me for doing my job."

At the military police station, in the colonel's office, Brown saluted the colonel and stood at attention. “The general sent this for you,” the colonel said, and handed him a military coin. It had the general's name and rank. It is a coin of appreciation.

If you are the rare American who likes roundabouts, you have the British to thank. In 1966, they figured out what was going wrong. According to the original design of traffic circles, entering cars had the right-of-way, so drivers charged in at high speed without paying attention to vehicles already circling. Once inside, they had to both watch for their exit and avoid incoming drivers. If traffic was heavy, the entire circle filled up with cars and came to a standstill. The British realized they needed to reverse the right-of-way, giving priority to the cars inside the intersection. Entering vehicles then had to pause and make sure there was space for them.

Circulating drivers could focus on exiting safely rather than dodging incoming cars. Once the correct right-of-way was established, capacity went up by 10 percent and crashes went down by almost half. Americans still took a lot of convincing. We didn’t build any more roundabouts until 1990.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The story of the traffic circle is an example of coordination for the greater good of everyone. The drivers inside the circle aren’t more important than those outside it, but there has to be a prioritized sequence in order for everyone to get where they’re going. Everyone benefits, even though incoming cars may have to slow down momentarily to find a gap. The difference between an efficient driving experience and total gridlock is the application of appropriate right-of-way rules.

Carolyn Arends is a Canadian Christian musician, author, and speaker. In an issue of CT magazine, she writes:

Years ago, I toured as an opening act for Rich Mullins. I loved overhearing conversations at the autograph table; they often turned serious and urgent.

More than once, a fan asked Rich how to discern the will of God. Rich would listen and then offer an unexpected perspective. He’d say, “I don’t think finding God’s plan for you has to be complicated. God’s will is that you love him with all your heart and soul and mind, and also that you love your neighbor as yourself. Get busy with that, and then, if God wants you to do something unusual, he’ll take care of it. Say, for example, he wants you to go to Egypt.” Rich would pause for a moment before flashing his trademark grin. “If that’s the case, he’ll provide 11 jealous brothers, and they’ll sell you into slavery.”

When I find myself wrestling with life decisions, I think of Rich’s Egypt Principle. It makes me laugh, and then it asks me to get down to the serious business of determining which of my options allow me to best love God and other people.

Maybe that’s why Rich could claim that loving God and others takes care of most of our discernment questions. After all, the psalmist assures us that if we delight ourselves in the Lord, he will give us the desires of our heart (Ps. 37:4). God can be trusted to teach our hearts what to desire, and to lead us—by jealous brothers, burning bushes, or quiet inclinations—to the places where our own unique giftings meet the movements of his kingdom. There we find consolation and joy.

Music icon Bono, lead singer of the popular band U2, tells the Atlantic magazine that lately God has been leading him to desire silence and listen to Him more. Bono points out that Elijah had to go to the cave to hear God, and God was heard not in the thunder and the wind but in the sound of silence.

All of his life, he has reinvented himself. Now he thinks it may be time to do it again. Bono says, “Music might be a jealous god. It was always the easiest thing for me. I wake up with melodies in my head. But now I feel more like: ‘Shut up and listen. If you want to take it to the next level, you may have to rethink your life.’”

Bono has been grappling with the challenges to his faith since the band first achieved success: "How do you reconcile the humility of faith with the egotism of superstardom, the purity of the Holy Spirit with the material excess of show business, the drive to achieve musical greatness with the posture of surrender to grace?"

His focus once again is to surrender his life: “It’s just out of my reach. I’m getting to the place where I do not have to do, but just be. It’s trying to transcend myself. It’s like my antidote to me. The antidote to me is surrender.”

The writer asks whether Bono can achieve the perfect stillness he craves. It’s hard to know the answer to that. At one point he told me that throughout his whole life, he’s been searching for home, and that lately he has come to realize that home is not a place, but a person. The writer says, “I neglected to ask the follow-up question. Is that person (his wife) Ali? Jesus? Any random soul he happens to be in front of that day? Maybe all of the above.”

In the summer of 1846, a party of 89 emigrants headed west along the 2,170-mile-long Oregon Trail. Tired, hungry, and trailing behind schedule, they decided at Fort Bridger, Wyoming to travel to their final destination in California by shortcut. The “Hastings Cutoff” they chose was an alternative route that its namesake, Lansford Hastings, claimed would shave at least 300 miles off the journey. The party believed this detour could save more than a month’s time. They were wrong.

Hastings Cutoff turned out to be a waterless, wide-open stretch of the Great Salt Lake Desert, that Hastings himself had never traveled. He simply looked at a map of the route that settler John C. Fremont had taken in 1845 across the Great Salt Lake Desert. Hastings then wrote a guidebook which said it would be quicker and easier than the standard trail. What Hastings didn’t realize was that Fremont almost died doing it.

By the time the Donner-Reed party finally reached the Sierra Nevada mountains, the shortcut had cost them weeks. Snow fell, trapping the travelers. This is when the most infamous (and deadly) part of their tale began. When members of the party began starving to death, survivors ate their remains to stay alive.

Shortcuts, supposedly easier ways of doing something, have often produced disastrous results. BLM Administrator Rob Sweeten said, “It’s obvious that [the emigrants] were in need of shorter routes to save time and money. Especially when you figure, they’re traveling 15 miles a day and facing challenges like changing weather and river conditions, and conflicts with Native Americans. Such difficulties often led to them attempting to find an easier route, shorter route. Though, in many cases, the new route turned out to be much harder.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Satan offered Jesus a disastrous shortcut that avoided the Cross (Matt. 4:1-10). We are also tempted in the same way to find the easy way to growth, status, or achievement. But God uses time, effort, and hardship in our lives to produce fully mature believers who are “conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29).

If you thought the stringent requirements of your homeowner’s association were bad, don’t even think about relocating to Villas Las Estrellas. The small community is home to a group of mostly scientists. But instead of pledging to keep the grass trimmed to a certain length, potential adult residents must agree to a series of health-related screenings, including a willingness to have an appendectomy.

That’s because Villas Las Estrellas is a small remote village in Antarctica, where temperatures are extremely cold and civilization is far, far away. Residents must submit to a voluntary appendectomy because if their appendix were to burst, they would need immediate medical attention, and the nearest hospital is more than 600 miles away.

That said, living in the village is far from solitary confinement. The village contains a bank, a school, a post office, and other basic necessities. Tourists also come through for skiing and snowmobiling expeditions.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Becoming a disciple of Jesus means submitting everything we are--including our bodies--to Christ's lordship.

When the Titanic crashed into an iceberg, the ship’s resources--light, electricity, heat, and so on--instantly were in danger of failing. However, the engineers who were in the engine room worked to supply electricity by keeping the engines and generators operational to ensure the survival of as many passengers as possible. Had the lights and wireless telegraph failed, panic would have been rife and it would have been impossible to summon assistance, or lower her lifeboats safely. But through their efforts power was maintained for the wireless set until ten minutes before she sank, with the lights failing just two minutes before she sank.

Although 1,517 people died on the Titanic, the death toll would’ve been much higher if it hadn’t been for the efforts of these engineers. All 25 engineers and 10 electricians and boilermakers were lost as they stayed below in the boiler rooms, in order to maintain power and lights. None of the them survived the sinking. A monument was built to them called the Memorial to the Engine Room Heroes of the Titanic. It was the first monument in British history to depict the working man.

Possible Preaching Angle:

These brave engineers laid down their lives so that others might live. The Apostle John writes: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters” (1 John 3:16).

In 2014, Steve Stamkos was looking forward to representing his country at the Sochi Olympic games. Sports analysts reported the importance of his role, so all of Canada was counting on him too. Everyone was concerned when Stamkos had fractured his right tibia in November of the previous year.

Doctors inserted a titanium rod to promote healing and stability. And as the date for the games approached, sports analysts reported that physical therapists had instituted a targeted regiment to speed up the healing. But by early February it became clear, Stamkos would not be ready in time.

In a statement Stamkos said: "(This) is obviously very disappointing for me. I honestly believe we did everything possible in order to have my injured leg ready in time for the Olympics, but I realize you can't force healing."

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sometimes, despite our best prayers, our best efforts, healing does not come. God has other plans. You can’t force the healing; you can't force the healer.

Former QB for the Philadelphia Eagles and Super Bowl MVP, Nick Foles got to play late in the 2017 regular season and go on to win it all thanks to an injury to starter Carson Wentz. After the surprising Super Bowl win, starter Wentz was ready to play during week 3 of the 2018 season and Foles was once again relegated to backup.

There was a lot of debate regarding Foles as the backup. Should the Super Bowl MVP really be relegated to backup? Long time, knowledgeable football fans, ex and current players and coaches all were adamant that their choice--Wentz or Foles--was the right and smarter one.

Many people were surprised that Foles took his relegation back to backup so well. In his 2018 book Believe It, Foles writes:

What they saw as a riches-to-rags sports story, I see as part of God’s divine plan. I’ve said all along that my desire is to play for God’s glory, not mine, and that’s exactly what I plan to do. My unique path from backup to Super Bowl MVP to backup again is a powerful message to share with people, and God has given me an ideal platform to do that from. To cheerfully return to a backup role after reaching the pinnacle of the sport contradicts everything the world tells us about success, fame, money and self-worth. To me, it’s a tangible reminder that we are called to humility and to a life of service….

Some people might think I deserve a better deal, but it’s not about what I deserve. It’s never been about that. The truth is, I’ve already been given far more than I deserve--a wonderful family; a job I love; grace and forgiveness; great friends, coaches and teammates. Everything I have is a gift from God, and I’m thankful for all of it. I am where I am now because of God’s grace, and I’ll continue to follow wherever he leads.

With hundreds of things to see in Berlin, few tourists pay attention to what lies under their feet. The four inch by four inch blocks of brass embedded in the pavement are easy to miss. But once you know they exist, you begin to come across them with surprising frequency.

Each stone is engraved with the name and fate of an individual who has suffered under the Nazi regime. They are known as Stolpersteine, or “stumbling stones.” There are over eight thousand of them in the German capital, and tens of thousands of them are spread across European countries, making it the largest decentralized monument in the world.

The idea was first conceived by German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992 to commemorate individual victims of the Holocaust. Each block, which begins with “Here lived,” is placed at exactly the last place where the person lived freely before he or she fell victim to Nazi terror and was deported to an extermination camp. Unlike other holocaust memorials that focus only on Jews, the Stolpersteine honor all victims of the Nazi regime, including Jews, the disabled, the dissident, and the gays.

Although not everyone supports the drive, Michael Friedrichs-Friedländer, the craftsman who makes each Stolperstein, spoke in support of the project. “I can’t think of a better form of remembrance,” he says. “If you want to read the stone, you must bow before the victim.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In his lowly life and death, the person of Jesus Christ can also be a stumbling stone, or the stone that was rejected by men that is precious to God.

In her book Confronting Christianity, Rebecca McLaughlin writes about her struggles with the concept of submitting to her husband (as found in Ephesians 5:22):

I came from an academically driven, equality-oriented, all-female high school. I was now studying in a majority-male college. And I was repulsed … I had three problems with this passage. The first was that wives should submit. I knew women were just as competent as men. My second problem was with the idea that wives should submit to their husbands as to the Lord. It is one thing to submit to Jesus Christ, the self-sacrificing King of the universe. It is quite another to offer that kind of submission to a fallible, sinful man. My third problem was the idea that the husband was the “head” of the wife. This seemed to imply a hierarchy at odds with men and women’s equal status as image bearers of God.

At first, I tried to explain the shock away … But when I trained my lens on the command to husbands, the Ephesians passage came into focus … When I realized the lens for this teaching was the lens of the gospel itself, it started making sense. If the message of Jesus is true, no one comes to the table with rights. The only way to enter is flat on your face. Male or female, if we grasp at our right to self-determination, we must reject Jesus, because he calls us to submit to him completely.

Ephesians 5 used to repulse me. Now it convicts me and calls me toward Jesus: the true husband who satisfies my needs, the one man who truly deserves my submission.

I have been married for a decade, and I am not naturally submissive. I am naturally leadership-oriented. I hold a PhD and a seminary degree, and I am the trained debater of the family. Thank God, I married a man who celebrates this! Yet it is a daily challenge to remember my role in this drama and notice opportunities to submit to my husband as to the Lord, not because I am naturally more or less submissive or because he is more or less naturally loving, but because Jesus went to the cross for me.

Their hearts may be on their sleeves, but their tattoos are under them. While participating in the 2019 Rugby World Cup, the manager of Samoa’s men’s national rugby team required his players to don special sleeves to cover their tattoos. The edict complied with an advisory statement by World Rugby, issued as part of the sport’s cultural awareness program. Manager Va'elua Aloi Alesana said, “We have to respect the culture of the land we are in wherever we go. We have our own culture as well, but we are not in Samoa now.”

When asked to elaborate, Alesana clarified his stance further:

There are some training venues that have allowed us to show our tattoos and some places where we can't, and for those places, we've been given “skins” to wear to cover our tattoos. The extra skins are only for when we go to the pools though. At the training we can wear our normal clothes.

It might not have been an easy choice for the players to follow, because tattoos are a revered aspect of Pacific Islander culture. But in Japan, they are often associated with the Japanese organized crime syndicates known as yakuza.

In the run up to the tournament, coach Steve Jackson consulted Japanese cultural experts to ensure players respect and appreciate the local culture. As a result, team captain Jack Lam was on board. Lam said, “It's quite normal in our culture. But we are respectful and mindful to what the Japanese way is. We will be making sure that what we are showing will be OK.”

Potential Preaching Angles: Respect for others means understanding your own culture and being willing to adjust when you visit other places. The call of Christian discipleship involves the practice of laying down our own preferences for the sake of others.