Chaplain’s Column

Stay Encouraged

It is March Madness! My brackets are filled out. Honestly, all five brackets are filled out. (Lets go Duke!) The competition to pick a perfect bracket has almost become greater than the basketball games themselves.

The process of picking a winner in the NCAA tournament is the excitement that draws many to fill out a bracket.

Over the course of three weeks, the field gets paired down as winners continue the dream and losers go home. The challenge for the millions of fans following the games is trying to pick the next NCAA champion.

Here’s how March Madness goes: They will start with 64 teams, then they’ll be 32. The next rounds are called Sweet 16, Elite Eight, and then the Final Four.

Making it to the tournament at all, is a big deal. Any team can make it, that is what makes March Madness fun.

For many, the choice of an eventual champion is based on hours of research and calculation. For some, their choice is blinded by devotion alone, to a favorite school or stat. For some of us, our brackets are based on lots of prayer!

Small college basketball teams can upset big ones, and everyone goes mad!

I was thinking about what drives us to “madness” in March. It could be all the uncertainty of the tournament. There are no guarantees. As in life, there are few guarantees, and this can not only be maddening but also very discouraging.

The Apostle Paul understood the power of hope and wrote a letter to the church in Rome encouraging the readers with these words, “but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”

Now the question is this, what’s the enemy of hope? It is discouragement. Discouragement can be very powerful.

Four thoughts about discouragement:

• We all get discouraged.

• You can catch it more than one time.

• It’s contagious. You can catch discouragement from people around you.

• It’s destructive.

Many of the things I have watched meet destruction have happened because of discouragement.

Almost every marriage I’ve ever seen that ended up being destroyed, discouragement preceded that. Nobody ever goes, “Man, I’m so in love with my wife, I think I’m going to get a divorce!” No, discouragement precedes that.

Every kid who dropped out of school, it was preceded by discouragement. Discouragement always precedes destruction.”

I was once asked, “what is the single most important thing you do as a Chaplain?” The single most important thing I do as a chaplain, is make sure I stay encouraged.

And if I were to ask you that question, “What’s the single most important thing you do as a mom, or as a dad? What’s the most important thing you do as a leader, as a business person? What’s the most important thing you do?”

If I’m not encouraged, I’m not going to be the chaplain God wants me to be. If I’m not encouraged, I’m not going to be the husband God wants me to be.

The single most important thing I do is make sure I stay encouraged. Encouraged people encourage others.

It has been said the two most important days in a person’s life is the day they were born and the day they discover “why” they were born.

Be encouraged today, you were designed for a purpose. Be the best “you” you can be. There has never been a “you” before and there will never be another “you.”

When the “brackets” of life get busted, stay encouraged! There is nobody better at being you than you. There is always next season.

Be hopeful by finding someone to encourage today!