Hello all! Last week my daughter’s school team, Cayuse Prarie, won the basketball championship in an exciting finish against a very good Crusader team. Competition at the highest level often draws out the best in players, the pressure reveals how hard individuals worked in practicing the basics of the game. Throughout the tournament, certainly in the championship game, the girls needed to focus on basics of the game and the plays in order to execute. At the end of the game Normandie needed to focus on dribbling so the clock ran out and passing the ball in from the sidelines. These are two basic fundamental elements of the game, elements that may have seemed routine and mundane in other moments, were now imperative to get right in the final two minutes of a championship game. She nailed it, the girls showed poise even though their nerves were “on fire”! (Dad’s nerves weren’t doing so well either) I recently heard a story about Jack Nicklaus, one of the best if not the best golfers to ever play. Every year, even when he was winning championships, he would go to his first golf instructor, a man named Jack Grout, and with one club he would ask, “Mr. Grout, teach me to play golf.” They would go back to the basics together and practice over and over so when the pressure was on, he would be able to be consistently deliver.

There is a lesson here for the Christian life in discipleship. Basics like studying the Bible, prayer, and joining the church for worship where the preaching of the Word, confession of sin, and offering of the sacraments are weekly regular means of grace, may be easy to over look. But when the pressures of life come our spiritual maturity or lack there of is exposed and we’ll need to fall back on these fundamental basics. Every week we meet together for worship, and at times it may seem uninspiring, inefficient, or even like a chore. But so much more is happening in this weekly ritual, even when we can’t feel or see it. In a sense, every week we are asking the Lord, “Teach me to be your disciple. Fill my mind with Your truth. Retune my heart to the gospel.”

On that note, we are going to begin an Old Testament survey class for adults at 9:00 in the chapel, and continue on with our 9:00 middle school Bible study in class room two. Perhaps you do not know much about the Old Testament, or maybe you have studied it for a long time, let us work through these books together. If you have a teenager or student, I would encourage you to bring them to the Bible study, in classroom #2. Learning these basics will benefit them as they grow in their discipleship. No one is beyond the basics, commit yourself, or recommit yourself to the discipline of learning God’s Word with your church community. When the clock is ticking down, you will have a sure foundation, a deep well from which to draw. God might even use you in a mighty way to bring about His glory in the lives of others.

Rev. Ben Melli