THE BOYS ON MY U-8 SOCCER TEAM LIVE to scrimmage. From the time they get to practice they are constantly asking me, “Hey coach, are we going to scrimmage today?” They tolerate stretching, they work hard at passing and dribbling, and practicing shots-on-goal, but they live to scrimmage against each other.
Scrimmaging is an important part of learning the game. It’s the closet thing we do to playing a real game, but without the other aspects of the practice all a scrimmage becomes is an opportunity to kick the ball around and instill improper soccer techniques. The learning and practicing of basic skills is crucial to a productive scrimmage and ultimately to a successful game.
Often, as followers of Jesus, we are like my soccer team. We want to scrimmage, or better yet, just play the game. But, in order for us to play the game well it is vital that we learn and practice the skills that we will need in the course of the real game.
One of those much needed skills is that of prayer. If we have not made a habit of the practice of prayer during the “everydayness” of our lives, then when we find ourselves in the midst of the heat of life , we will not have developed the skills needed to grant us success. Prayer, like the skills of soccer, needs to be practiced over and over again, so that when we find ourselves in the need of prayer, it will come as naturally as a push pass to our teammate.
Play on! Opps, I mean “pray-on!”