Good morning! This past weekend, we went outside to play ‘Around the World’, a basketball shooting game. For those who don’t know, there are five different shots: you start on one side of the hoop and after making the shot, you move to the next location which is diagonal to the hoop; then straight on, and so on. When you make it all the way to the other side, then you have to start working your way back.
If at any point you miss a shot, you have two options: one – you can stay at the location and try to make it next time, or two – you can retry the shot, but if you miss the shot you get reset back to the beginning. This is always fun because Josh and I will normally try to get into each other’s head. For instance, if he starts hitting his shots and working his way around pretty quickly, I’ll start saying things like, “Oh this kid is on fire” because I want him to start distracting him from the focus that he is showing. Then, if he misses and wants to stay, I’ll try to egg him on to take the shot again – hoping that he misses and gets reset!
There were a couple times where I made it to the last shot and missed. Because I was so far in the lead, I was willing to risk it even if that meant experiencing the setback, but there was one time specifically that I had made up my mind that if I missed the last shot, I was determined to stay. I was still in the lead but wanted to make it easier to win by only having to hit this last shot.
Josh got into my head and I ended up going for the retry, even though I didn’t want to. It is a difficult shot because there is a tree branch in the way, but I decided to go for it because I wanted to quiet his chatter. I put up the shot and instead of hearing the swish, there was the sound of the ball hitting the rim and coming right back to me.
We kept doing this back and forth and Mer wanted no part of it LOL. She would shoot her shot and stay every time not wanting to risk getting reset. At one point, we thought she was going to win – the old ‘slow and steady wins the race’ mentality. But eventually in the end, Josh won!
The one moment of giving in to Josh’s mind games cost me the game. There was no chance that I could have been beaten if I just stayed on the last shot until I made it, but I allowed Josh to distract me from winning the game because I wanted to prove him wrong.
This may sound silly, but this happens to us when we allow other people to distract us from growing in our relationship with God because we want to quiet down their chatter. Sometimes this may look like doing something we know we shouldn’t do, but we do it because we just want to prove someone else wrong. Other times we may do something we don’t want to because we are looking for someone else’s approval above honoring God.
“Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.”
1 John 3:7
This doesn’t just pertain to our actions, it also applies to what we believe. Sometimes we allow people to cause us to stray away from what we know is right because it’s hard to constantly be the person in the room that stands out because of what we believe. The truth in God’s Word is not always going to be the most popular thing for people to hear because it goes against the way of the world.
To overcome peer pressure, we have to be sure of what we believe, committed to living for God above ourselves, and confident of who we are in Christ.
Let’s not let other people distract us from growing in our relationship with God. We need to keep our eyes on Jesus and not worry about what others believe or do. We cannot control others, but we certainly can control what we do.
Heavenly Father, thank You for this reminder to stand our ground and not allow others to deceive us. We want to live for You in every moment of everyday. Help us to not allow the distractions of others cause us to believe things that aren’t true or act in ways we know are wrong! In Jesus Name – AMEN!
Be Transformed 