Winning Beyond The Scoreboard
For the athlete who has heard at various points that “winning isn’t everything”—and yet often experiences the exact opposite perspective (sometimes from the very coach or parent who said it), what does it truly look like to actually win beyond the scoreboard?
We don’t need to guess what God considers “victorious living.” His perspective on how we should best orient our lives is spread through the Bible. During Jesus’ earthly ministry, we see a consistent refrain: invest in His kingdom, not your own.
When you focus on your kingdom, it’s all about your advancement. It’s about how you look, what you can get out of a situation, and what’s best for you. When you focus on God’s kingdom, it’s all about advancing His priorities. Your desires shift from an inward focus to a himward focus.
Of course, it’s easy to say this should be the desire of our hearts and the trajectory of our lives. But it can be easy for this to become more visionary and philosophical than present and practical.
That’s where we’re heading from here. What follows are perspectives and practices that can unlock victorious, well-invested lives in our day-to-day experience as athletes. In athletic terms, we could say that this is how we pursue a “victory beyond competition.”
You know what winning looks like by earthly standards—it’s about defeating the competition. But what does victory look like beyond competition? What does it mean to be victorious by God’s standards? Let’s find out.
*Disclaimer: You should still pursue victory on the actual scoreboard. Winning may not be everything, but it is absolutely a big part of the thing. This is a “both-and” pursuit. It’s not “either-or.” You should pursue the earthly win and the victories that exist beyond competition.
Victorious Athletes Love God
“What’s your number one priority this year?”
Scott, a former campus director with Athletes in Action®, asked his student leadership team this question every semester. And he usually picked on the new person in the room. The rest of the athletes would smirk, knowing that the newbie would give a good, spiritual answer. They also knew it would be wrong.
“To reach my teammates for Christ!”
“To start a bible study!”
“To disciple a teammate!”
“To pray for my coach!”
“Nope,” Scott would say. His tone never reflected anger, shame, disappointment, or frustration. “Everyone, can you tell Joe what his number ONE priority is this year?”
“Your relationship with God,” the group would say in unison.
Athlete, your first priority is your personal walk with the Lord. This comes right from the Great Commandment, proclaimed by Jesus in Matthew 22:37-40:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Everything else flows out of this:
A growing relationship with God helps protect you from finding your acceptance in what you do for him.
A growing relationship with God allows you to continually be grounded in the gospel truth that you are loved, forgiven, cherished, and accepted in God’s eyes because of what he has done for you through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son, Jesus.
A growing relationship with God helps give you a proper perspective on your sport, your teammates, and your coaches.
A growing relationship with God helps you turn to the proper sources to learn more about him—like the Bible, the Holy Spirit, the church, and other trusted men and women in your life.
A growing relationship with God helps you fight the sin in your life.
A growing relationship with God helps you find contentment in him above all else. Pastor and author John Piper says it this way: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”
So, what are some ways to ensure your relationship with God stays number one? It starts with understanding that God is not a box to be checked and moved on from. Even the language of “making God your number one priority” can lead us into this unhealthy thinking. Put another way, prioritizing God does not mean reading the Bible in the morning then forgetting about him the rest of the day. Prioritizing God means finding ways to engage with him during every part of your day.
Here are a few reminders of practical ways to prioritize God daily:
Start your day by reading God’s Word. There are plenty of apps, websites, devotionals, and books to help you get the most out this time. The Bible Project is especially helpful. They create short animated videos that help explain books, passages, and themes of the Bible. The Ao1® Life app (created by Athletes in Action) has a number of devotionals and Bible studies contextualized for an athletic audience.
Set an alarm on your phone or watch to go off every hour. When it does, center your mind on God for a minute or two. Remember what you read in the morning. Thank him for what you see around you. Ask him for help with whatever is in front of you. Praise him for sending his Son to die for you.
Confess immediately. You probably fall short of God’s perfection many times each day. Welcome to the club. A way to prioritize God is to confess your sin to him the moment you recognize it, then rest in his forgiveness. First John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Find community. It’s really hard to prioritize God on your own. We were created to do this together. It’s one of the reasons God gave us the church. Who helps you think about and engage with God the most?
Victorious Athletes Love Others
The second part of the Great Commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. In your context, this means loving your teammates, coaches, trainers, support staff, and yes, even your competitors, more than you love yourself.
By loving others more than ourselves, we mirror the actions of Jesus. Paul says it this way in Philippians 2:4-8:
“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
How do we do this practically? Let’s not overcomplicate this. Loving means serving. And true love means serving without an expectation of reciprocation. Stated differently, you don’t keep score or expect anything in return. You just serve.
How can you serve those around you today? Seriously, ask yourself that question, come up with a few ways to serve them—and do it.
Victorious Athletes Live in the Present
God’s Word encourages us to live with a mindset that fully engages in the present in many ways, but perhaps no passage is as straightforward as Psalm 118:24: “This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
What if you tried to appreciate the present day instead of dwelling on past performances or worrying about future opportunities?
If today is indeed the day that the LORD has made, how can you rejoice and be glad in it?
Try starting your day with a prayer like this, then pay attention to how God answers it:
“Father, thank you for THIS day. You know my tendency to reflect back on the past and think forward to the future. But I want to be fully present today and rejoice and be glad in it. Would you help me to do that? God, would you help me to see things that I normally miss? Would you help me to hear things that my busy mind usually mutes out? Would you help me to enjoy the taste of food and drink? And God, would you help me to enjoy my sport today by giving me a peace that transcends all understanding? Thank you for this day!”
Five minutes after saying a prayer like this, you might second guess something from yesterday or fret about something coming tomorrow. That’s ok. You’re human. The goal is not perfection; it’s progress. And the aim is not to ignore the past or neglect to consider the future. There is wisdom in what they both bring. This is about appreciating the amazing gift that God has given each day, and choosing to be glad in it.
One final thought pertaining to being present: allow the beauty of the present to point you to joy in God. Pastor and author Paul David Tripp says it this way:
“Only two types of glory exist—sign glory and ultimate glory. Sign glory is all the wondrous display of sights, sounds, colors, textures, tastes, smells, and experiences of the physical world that God created. These glories were not designed to satisfy your heart. Rather, all of creation was designed to be one big sign that points you to the One of ultimate glory who alone has the power to give you life and to satisfy your heart… He designed his world to point to him, not to replace him.”
That last sentence is one worth clinging to and remembering. Our joy decreases when we lose sight of this reality. It’s why pursuing victories based on the scoreboard alone will never satisfy long term.
Victorious Athletes Maintain Perspective
Psalm 42 provides great insight into what the deepest part of your soul truly desires. It’s a playbook leading toward victory beyond competition. The first two verses explain:
“As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?”
This is the default state of your soul. One that constantly and consistently longs for God and will never be fulfilled without him. Our souls pant (long or cry out) for God as a deer pants for streams of water.
What does this have to do with proper perspective as it relates to sports?
This may be a little hard to hear, so if you need to brace yourself or sit down, now would be the time: sports will never fully satisfy your ultimate longing for lasting joy and fulfillment. They just can’t. Sports bring us plenty of benefits, but ultimate satisfaction is not one of them. The Bible explains why.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 mentions that God “has put eternity into man's heart.” This is profound, and it agrees with what we saw in Psalm 42. An eternal longing can only truly be filled by an eternal God. He filled our hearts with longing for him. Yet we try to fill this void in countless other ways, not the least of which are our athletic endeavors.
Here is some good news. Your sport can still be fun. You can still experience joy and satisfaction as you practice and compete. But you need a perspective grounded in the reality that sports have a ceiling on the amount of joy they can bring.
As you pursue a victory beyond competition, remember this: Just as you wouldn’t run to the ocean to satisfy your thirst, don’t look to your sport to satisfy the ultimate longings of your soul. God wants to do that.
When you release sport from the pressure to be everything for you, it frees you to experience it as God originally intended it to be: an avenue of play to enjoy (joy), a vehicle for refining you (sanctification), and avenue through which you invest in others (mission).
Enjoy it for what it is and release it from the expectation you may have put on it to fix everything in your life.
Victorious Athletes Give Dignity to Everyone
The Bible overflows with God’s concern for the poor and downtrodden, for those who don’t have a voice, for people oppressed by the powerful. Seeking justice on behalf of the marginalized in society reflects God’s heart for justice throughout the universe. We’re called to show dignity to those around us.
We need God to give us eyes to see the overlooked people around us every day. Not just the marginalized or poor, but the unbeautiful, the unfamous, the uncool.
One practical step is to ask God for help noticing the people who play the background track to your daily life. After all, they are considered unnoticed because, well, we neglect to even see them. Then, ask him for the discipline to do something when you notice them.
What should you do? Ask their name. Find out if they have family. Inquire how long they have been a maintenance worker or a trainer or a fan. Just be a kind, inquisitive human. That first step might lead to a new friendship or an opportunity to serve them and make a difference in their life.
If nothing else, a giant step forward in aligning yourself with God’s heart for the unrecognized is to show dignity and respect to every single person on your team, especially when they are not getting it from others. You can stand in the gap on their behalf and advocate for them from your position of power.
Pursue the victory on the scoreboard. But in the process, don’t forget that victory by God’s standards can be achieved all throughout your athletic journey. Commit to making him your first love. Find ways to serve those around you. Enjoy the good gift of sport. Keep it all in perspective. And finally, take a cue from Jesus and begin to notice the people that God may be intentionally putting in front of you.
This is where I would insert a great closing line about how God values His scoreboard above our earthly one—but I'll assume you get the point by now.
*This post has been adapted from a chapter in the book Victory Beyond Competition: How do I live and play for God’s Kingdom?
