Fruit Of The Spirit Sports Devotional Sample

Leader's Guide Lesson 7: Goodness

Theme: 

Goodness is doing the right thing all the time, whether someone is watching or not, with God as our example and audience.

Coaches' Notes:

 There are two viral videos from the sports I coach that come to mind with this fruit of the Spirit. One is a grainy cell phone footage of a game between Western Oregon and Central Washington. A Central Oregon player hits a ball over the fence, but she trips and tears ligaments in her knee rounding first base. She cannot get up on her own to run around the bases. Her coaches can help her off the field and substitute a pinch runner, but the penalty for doing so would be the play is limited to a single (since that is as far as she was able to run on her own). The umpires do not have any other options, according to the rules. But the unheard of happened instead. Players from the other team picked her up and took her around the bases. No rule prohibits the other team from assisting her. They walked her around the bases, carrying her and stopping at each base for her to tap the base, until she reached home. The home run was legal (and was this girl’s first out-of-the-park home run).

Another video shows a high school pitcher striking out a batter to end a playoff game in Minnesota. The win advanced the winning team to the Minnesota state tournament. The winning team, understandably, immediately celebrates the win. But the batter who had struck out to end the game happened to be one of the pitcher’s long-time close friends. The pitcher immediately walks right by his catcher, who was coming out to celebrate with the pitcher and others, and does the unthinkable: he walks straight to home plate, hugs his friend who had struck out, and consoles him.

Both are moving videos. Why? Because they show what goodness looks like. Goodness as described by Paul is not just generally doing good things or being good most of the time. It’s being good even when doing so risks something, or doesn’t benefit us at all. In the videos, being good actually hurts the ones doing it. In carrying the girl around the bases, it cost the team a run. In consoling the batter, the pitcher missed out on the celebration right after the game. Goodness values doing right over how it affects us.

Discussion Questions:

1.) If you have a way for your players to watch a video, have them watch one or both of the videos. Ask what your players think about the girls who carried the player around the bases or the pitcher who consoled the hitter. 

2.) Read Micah 6.8. Challenge your players to go out of their way to live this Bible verse over the next week.

Discussion:

I love watching good versus evil in superheroes. Superman versus Lex Luthor. The Flash versus the Reverse Flash. Batman versus the Joker. I like the battles between the clearly good superhero and the clearly bad one. With the Flash versus the Reverse Flash, the Flash is always trying to do the right thing while the Reverse Flash is pure evil and always trying to hurt and harm others. 

Unfortunately, in real life good versus evil, right versus wrong, can be confusing. Good people make bad decisions. What many would think are bad decisions, some claim are good decisions. What is right? What is good? Is it simply what I think or say it is? What if what I say it is differs from what you say it is?

It’s easy to see how chaotic it can be for everyone to decide for themselves what’s good and what’s right. We need a more consistent, objective guide for goodness. The Bible provides that guide. The word “good” or words with the root word “good” in them, including goodness, are mentioned almost 700 times in the Bible. A perfect and loving God created goodness. When Jesus, God in the flesh, walked on earth, He was always good and lived a perfect life. Micah, a prophet of God, summarizes what it is to be good: “to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6.8).

First, to do justice. Justice is consistently doing what is right without any favoritism. We don’t show goodness if we treat our friends better than others. We don’t show justice if we treat people one way some of the time, and another way other times.

Second, to love kindness. Not to sometimes be kind. Not to generally be kind. But to love kindness. To have kindness be what defines us. To be in love with being kind to others, no matter what they can offer us in return or even if others are unkind to us.

Third, to walk humbly with your God. This means to do the right thing as defined by what Jesus would do, not what we want to do or how we think it will impact us. Goodness is, after all a fruit of the Spirit that we need God’s help to walk along side of us to do. When (and only when) we walk closely with God, we can show goodness.