Glory

I realize that I have become and old man. I am not quite 30 yet but I find that when I am driving in my car if I don’t listen to the iPod then I am listening to sports talk radio. I can remember making fun of my friend Jon for doing that very thing about 6 years ago. I guess what goes around comes around.

That is not the point of me writing this that is just extra. The other day while I was listening to said sports talk I heard an interview by a coach named Dave Bliss. Some of you may recognize the name some may not. If you are a Baylor Bear you probably just cringed. If you want to read the story about what happened to Coach Bliss at Baylor here is a link to the story on Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Bliss#The_Baylor_scandal it was not one of his shining moments to say the least. I had met Dave Bliss a couple times while I was growing up in Albuquerque and he always seemed like a very honest and upfront guy and most of all a Christian man. He had spoken of his relationship with God on a couple of occasions that I had heard so when everything went down at Baylor I was shocked to say the least.

Now to the interview I heard on the radio the other day. I heard the man speak that I knew from my teenage years. I heard a man fully reconciled in the eyes of the only One that matters to him. It was said in the interview that Coach Bliss was not looking for the acceptance or forgiveness of man, all though I am sure that he would appreciate it if it was given. He is very regretful of the decisions that he made in his past. You can hear in his voice and the way that he speaks that he is truly sorry for what happened. But he is also not dejected or depressed, you can hear a joy in his voice and it is not a joy of whom he was but who he is, not about how he lived his life but of how he is living his life. I can honestly say that after listening to Coach Bliss’s interview I was inspired to be a better man and make wise decisions.

He has is currently living everyday in a way that gives God the glory. You can hear the Joy of the Lord in Coach Bliss’s voice. Now many of you will think that Coach Bliss is another athlete that “found” God. But he said that he is “not another athlete that found God I just forgot God in my life”. Those words rang in my heart and mind. How many people are there out there that have God in their lives but forget that he is there? I am sure more then we know.

Something else that Coach Bliss said that I think transcends sports and can apply to us all is about how he got into the position that he was in the first place. He said it was a “bad decision” (which I thought was the understatement of the decade). But that is what it was a bad decision, one that he says he didn’t come to overnight. It was a “desensitization that occurs over a period of time” to the decision. He stayed in the gray so long that the gray leaked over into the illegal and immoral. Once he became desensitized to the sin it became harder and harder not to make those decisions that Satan told him he “would not get caught for.” He said that it stemmed from his pride. How many of us deal with that problem? I know I have and even do currently. Probably my biggest sin is pride.

Coach Bliss says that it was subtle changes from his principles and values that lead him down the path that most of us a very familiar with. We all need to be careful about the little things in our lives and have integrity in all that we do because we are not too far from traveling down the road that Coach Bliss traveled. Maybe not as extreme or maybe more so who knows but if we can keep our principle and values we can have the same goals and continue to live like Coach Bliss is living his life now, Glorifying God.