24 Hour Rule

24 Hour Rule

by Grant Gaines

I have always loved playing sports, but growing up my favorite sport by far and away was—and is still—football. I played football all the way through school and loved every second of it! In my humble opinion, football is such a great game because it is the ultimate team sport. All eleven players must be working in unison otherwise their efforts will prove fruitless. Football is also a great game because of all the life lessons it teaches.

Team work, hard work, discipline, obeying authority, and perseverance are just several of the lessons taught by the game of football. When I began playing varsity football, I learned one more life lesson: The 24 Hour Rule. The idea behind The 24 Hour Rule was that win or lose, our team would move on from that week’s game 24 hours after it ended. If we won, we enjoyed the win for a day. If we lost, we allowed the loss to sink in for a day. But after 24 hours was up, we moved our focus to next week’s opponent.

The 24 Hour Rule was a great idea because it kept you from “getting fat” off last week’s success or it kept you from allowing last week’s loss to hamper your preparation for the next week’s game.

This idea of The 24 Hour Rule is a valuable philosophy we as Christians should apply to our lives. We shouldn’t allow ourselves to rest on our laurels because we might become complacent and miss out on the good works God has prepared for us to do (Ephesians 2:10, NIV). At the same time, we shouldn’t let our past mistakes limit us from the opportunities of the present and the future.

In the Bible we see several instances where the philosophy of the 24 Hour Rule is in place.

First, in Luke 12:16-21 we see Jesus warning us against becoming overly satisfied with our past success. This is the parable of the “Rich Fool”. In this parable, a farmer reaps a huge harvest one Fall. The harvest was so big that the farmer actually had to tear down his two smaller barns in order to build a bigger one just to store all of his produce! Because of his success, the famer makes the following statement to himself, “…You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry” (Luke 12:19, NIV).

God was not too pleased with this man. In fact, God appears to the farmer and tells him he will die that day because of this attitude. God was not displeased with the man’s success but with the lackadaisical attitude he had about the future. The man allowed his past success to make him lethargic and useless for God’s ongoing plan.

An easy way to overcome the tendency of basking in our past success is to remember where our success comes from. According to James 1:17 (NIV) our success comes from God, “Every good and perfect gift is from above…” Therefore, just as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 4:7 (NLT), “…What do you have that God hasn’t given you? And if everything you have is from God, why boast as though it were not a gift?”

The Bible also teaches us to avoid allowing our past failures to hinder our future. 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV) says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” When we become Christians by accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior we are forgiven from our past sins which means we are free from guilt as well (Galatians 5:1, NIV). This is great news! This means we no longer have to carry around the weight of our past failures, but are free to start afresh with a clean slate.

Whether we have a prosperous or mistake riddled past, God wants us to be free from the distractions of yesterday so we can be productive with the work He has planned for us today. As the old saying goes, “The past should not be an anchor to hold us back, but a rudder to guide us into the future.”

Is your past an anchor or a rudder?  If it is an anchor (something that is holding you back from accomplishing the plans God has for you), why not pause right now and accept the freedom from your past that God is offering you?

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©Grant Gaines 2013