WINNING ISN'T WINNING IF YOU DO IT BY LOSING

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Winning isn’t Winning if you do it by Losing


How do you define winning? Is it money? Is it status? What is it that drives you? Take a moment and reflect on these questions before you read further.

Now don’t lose your train of thought but follow me for a minute. The word winning has sorely been abused here recently. As a Christian man I have been asking God to reveal to me what offends me about this abuse so bad. And its simple Winning isn’t Winning if you do it by losing.

Orlando Woolridge comes to my mind. He was a great offensive scorer one yr he averaged over 30 points a game. He was the leagues leading scorer. But his team was horrible they lost consistently. You could blame the coach the system he played in but it was that same system that gave him the points. And he was celebrated. I remember even as a kid before I ever played competitive basketball I understood that is not winning. But according to society it was. I guess I was always counter cultural. Praise God!!! Can you imagine if he stood up in the locker-room and received an award for scoring the most points on a team that only won 25 games. I think they even won less but do you get my point. Or if he said something like if you guyes score more we would win. The question comes to mind would you rather score 30 points a game and lose a lot or 15 a game and win a championship. There is a huge difference in mentality and only people who have experienced both sides of life can comprehend the depth of this. He who scores the most points does not win. It’s the team who scores the most points that wins.

Losing sucks. Its painful. As an athlete (not that I was ever much of one) it annoys me still to this day when my team loses to see guys running to the scorers table to get their stats. That’s not winning. When the buzzer sounds in life and when our time is up. There is a final score. You better believe it there is.

Final Score


Its 1988 my grandfather is dying and I am spending my summer with him to say goodbye. My greatest life’s lesson was taught to me that summer. My grandfather had gotten saved and lived the last part of his life serving God. The one and only thing I remember him saying to me that summer was this.

David when your all alone. When you know your dying. When there is no time left on earth. There is only 3 things that matter .
1) Who you loved
2) Who loved you
3) What you did for God.
That’s it he said nothing matters but that. My interpitation of that was bam that’s the only final score that matters. How you calculate that score in your life is what makes you a winner or loser. And the only person who gets to make that call is God.


Real winning is done at the expense of self and builds others up. Winners in life don’t need for someone to get fired to get promoted because they get the guy above them promoted and create their own promotion by doing so. Winners don’t walk into a situation and look for what’s wrong with it they walk in and see opportunity and find a way to make a difference. Winning might mean not getting the headlines but that quite alright Because the headlines were never what the winner is after. Winning is knowing when its time to step aside and when its time to assert your self. Winning is making the extra pass even when it’s a wide open shot you make all the time. (better to build another’s confidence then our own scoring average) Winners don’t care about their critics because with winning comes the critics.

I have only been saved 4 yrs so I am not a career pew sitting Christian. I don’t have any experience in the deep politics that goes on in most church’s . We as Christians are supposed to be the light unto the world. But when it comes to winning sometimes and a lot of the time we are no different then the world.

Winners are not winners because of who they know ….but because of WHO knows them. (Jesus). We only win through Christ. Everything else is temporal.

So now do you remember those questions I asked you? Now let me ask you another set. Have you showed uncommon Love to someone today? What do you do to build someone else? See as a Body of Christ we should be the model of teamwork and self sacrifice. I for one need to work on all this. I get self centered at times. I forget the vision of Christ supersedes the vision of David. If your like me. Set this as a goal. That we will find one person and do uncommon love towards them tomorrow. And we will search out every opportunity to build others around us and let God do the building of us. Because Where ever we Go WE WIN!!! Because of the Winning already done for us!!!