Competing With GritSample

Day 1

Integrity: Your Foundation in Christ

READY

“He took David from tending the ewes and lambs and made him the shepherd of Jacob’s descendants—God’s own people, Israel. He cared for them with a true heart and led them with skillful hands.” — Psalm 78:71-72 (NLT)

SET

If there is any sport that is directly tied to the shoe industry, it’s basketball. Watching Jordan play, every little kid knew that if they could only get those shoes, they’d somehow play a little more like Mike. Love him or hate him, every athlete deep down wants to be like Jordan because he was always the best player and competitor on the court. That’s his legacy. 

King David is known for being a man after God’s own heart. Now that’s something worth striving for in life. If I can’t get David’s limited-edition sandal, how can I be more like David? We have to look at his heart, a heart of integrity. In the Psalm, it says that David led Israel with a “true heart and skillful hands.” Integrity is being honest, true, and real. We have to start with what’s inside our hearts before anything we do with the skills of our hands even matters. 

Integrity is the first of FCA’s four core values. Integrity is foundational to who a person is because, without it, the rest of the core values are in jeopardy of collapsing. We need to be people who are the same in public as we are in private. Only Jesus accomplished this 100% of the time. Be encouraged by David’s life—he wasn’t perfect, but he was still considered a man after God’s own heart. Let’s be a little more like David and lead with integrity of heart so we too can be people after God’s own heart.

GO

• Have you ever played with or been coached by a man or woman of integrity?
• What did it feel like to play with or be coached by them?
• Would a player or teammate describe you as a person of integrity by the way you compete and/or coach? If not, what’s the first step you can take towards integrity?

WORKOUT

Proverbs 11:3; 1 Peter 3:16; 2 Corinthians 8:21

OVERTIME

“God, help us be people of integrity—athletes and coaches who are real, authentic, and trustworthy. Not so that we can look good, but so that we can speak into others’ lives and tell them about the hope we have in the name of Jesus. Amen.”

Kelly Schmidt

Kelly started working for Arizona FCA in August of 2012. She now serves as the Collegiate Director at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix. Collegiately she played basketball at Vanguard University in Southern California and returned to Phoenix, where she was born and raised, to work for FCA.