Good morning and welcome to Starting Right with Danny Mac . I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great five-minute start to your day . So grab your cup of coffee , sit back , relax and let me help you start your day right . One of my favorite things to do when I have some time is to watch football .
I'm talking North American football here , not what the rest of the world knows as football . The North American game is very different , but in the United States it is hugely popular . I'm not in the States , but I love it as well . I love watching very good teams compete against each other . It's exciting to see what they do and how they play .
The caliber of the professional football is astounding , but very close to that is the caliber of football played in the American universities . This college football is wonderful to watch and I do have my favorite teams . One of the things that the sports television stations do here is , at the end of every month , they run a blooper reel .
This is a place where they showcase the foolish mistakes made by professional or college-level players that really shouldn't have happened , things like missing a wide-open goal or dropping a ball , or running into your own player and falling down , and sometimes they're quite funny .
It wasn't too long ago I saw one of the bloopers that showcased a game between two major American universities . The quarterback for one team stepped back and threw the ball down the sidelines to one of his wide-open receivers , who caught it with no defender anywhere near him , and he ran easily and lazily towards the end zone .
As he got closer and closer to the end zone , he began to wave to the crowd and he actually threw them a kiss . He could tell he was pretty happy about it all , except that before he actually crossed the goal line , he dropped the ball , thinking that he had already scored .
He proceeded then to face away from the field and to dance before the crowd , celebrating what he thought was his touchdown . Now , because he dropped the ball before it crossed the goal line , it was not a touchdown , and one of the players from the other team who were chasing him picked up that ball and ran halfway back down the field before they were stopped .
Meanwhile , the first man continued to dance in the end zone , celebrating , oblivious to the fact that he hadn't scored at all . In our part of the world , if someone does that , we call it showboating and it is just an exaggerated way to say look at me and how great I am . Cs Lewis once said , for pride is a spiritual cancer .
It eats up the very possibility of love or contentment or even common sense . In Luke 18 , jesus describes two men at the temple praying . One was a Pharisee , one was a tax collector . The Pharisee , who was a religious leader , said I thank God that I am not a sinner like other people around me .
The tax collector , on the other hand , lamented his sins with regret to God and to the astonishment of the listeners . Jesus says it is the tax collector who is justified before God and not the Pharisee . Those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted .
That football player in the story thought he was pretty hot stuff , that he had caught the ball , that he had made the touchdown , that everything was great . What he didn't realize is that he made a mistake along the way .
He did not score and in fact the other team recovered the ball and were well on their way to go back down the field in the other direction . The Pharisee who prayed before the temple wanted everybody to see and hear how great and wonderful he was for his own humility , that he was humble and holy , and , above all , other men .
Well , the man who was the tax collector , who was very much considered to be an outcast , prayed humbly before God and said Lord , this is who I am , forgive me , Help me . There are lessons for us in all three of these people the football player , the Pharisee and the tax collector .
And that lesson is found in Romans , chapter 12 and verse 3 , where Paul writes and says I give each of you this warning Don't think you are better than you really are . Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves , measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us .
Let's make sure that we measure ourselves based upon who God says we are and the faith that he's given us , and not based upon what we've accomplished or how smart or good we think we really are . But let our view of ourselves be as God sees us . And how does God see us ?
Well , the Bible tells us that God sees us as His beloved children , and when he looks at us , he doesn't see our imperfections or our weaknesses . He sees us as whole and holy before Him because of what Christ has done for us . He always loves us , he always accepts us .
We may not have experienced everything God is going to do through our lives , but we do know what the Bible tells us about how he sees us and to Him we are perfect . So as you start your day , god's looking at you right now and he says to you you are perfect and I love you . I hope you have a great day . My friends , we'll talk again tomorrow .
Thank you for listening today and I invite you to join me Monday to Friday , right here on Starting Right , with Danny Mac .