Ground Zero

Ground Zero

by Grant Gaines

John Wooden is unanimously regarded as the greatest basketball coach in NCAA history. As the head coach of the UCLA Bruins, Coach Wooden won 10 national championships, 37 straight NCAA tournament games, finished the season four times with an undefeated record, and won a men’s record of 88 consecutive games under his tutelage.

What made Wooden so successful was that he demanded his teams know the fundamentals of the game. Coach Wooden was so serious about teaching his team the ground rules that during the first practice of every season he would sit his team down and show them the correct way to lace up their basketball shoes. Now that’s a commitment to the basics!

You see, Coach Wooden knew that if you didn’t understand even the most basic fundamentals of the game, you could not be successful. Period. In a similar fashion, if we as Christians do not understand the most basic fundamentals of our faith, we cannot expect to grow in a deep, intimate relationship with God.

Like Coach Wooden, Jesus also taught His followers the importance of the fundamentals. When asked by the Pharisees what the single most important command in the entire Bible was, do you remember what Jesus said in response? Surely He said a command about money; after all, money seems to be such a big issue in our lives. Or possibly Jesus would have told them the command found in 1 John 5:21 (NIV), “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols,” since idolatry was what enticed the Israelites away from God so often in the Old Testament.

But Jesus knew that compared to the commands He would give in Matthew 22:37-39 (NIV), everything else was trivial. And so Jesus declared that the greatest command we could follow was and still is to, “…’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

If loving God with all of our heart, soul, and mind is the first command, it should also be our chief priority. And as we welcome the New Year and begin to make all our resolutions and plans, wouldn’t it be foolish not to include our love for God, the very foundation of our faith?

Unfortunately, as obvious as the answer to that question is, we see example after example of men and women in the Bible fail to keep their love for God as their number one priority. Just look at the two most prominent kings in the Old Testament. David, the very man who defeated Goliath as a boy and was given the nickname by God Himself as, “…a man after His own heart…” (1 Samuel 13:14, NIV), ended the later part of his life by committing adultery with Bathsheba, murdering her husband, and taking an ill-advised census which angered the Lord and resulted in 70,000 Israelites being killed in a plague (2 Samuel 24). David’s son Solomon, was the wisest man to ever live (1 Kings 4:30). In the early part of his reign, he built a magnificent temple, brought great prosperity to Israel, and wrote three of the 39 books found in the Old Testament. Yet as Solomon aged, the love for the things of the world, “…turned [Solomon’s] heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God…” (1 Kings 11:4, NIV).

Both David and Solomon were successful early on because they were building their lives on the love of God, which Paul calls our, “…firm foundation…” (2 Timothy 2:19, ESV). But as they grew in age and success, they began to move away from their foundation of loving God with their heart, soul, and mind. And if it is possible for these two men to drift away from, “…being rooted and established in love…” (Ephesians 3:17, NIV), it would be rather foolish to assume that the same could not happen to us, wouldn’t you agree?

And what happens if we do not get the first command right? Jesus answers this question as He closes out His conversation with the Pharisees in Matthew 22. After stating the two greatest commands (loving God and loving others), Jesus concluded His discussion by declaring, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:40, NIV). In other words, if we fail at loving God, we fail at everything else.

Or as Paul told us in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (NIV), “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.” Just as a sturdy building cannot be built on a weak foundation, if we do not have a firm foundation of loving God, we cannot excel in any other area of our faith.

So as the “ball drops” and the end of this blog nears, I’ll ask the question one last time: wouldn’t it be a shame if we rushed into 2013 without being sure to lay a supreme love for God as our firm foundation? Won’t you join with me this New Year in making a resolution not to, “…forsake [our] First Love” (Revelation 2:4, NIV)?

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©Grant Gaines 2013