The Road to J. O. Y.Намуна

Seek God, No Matter the Score

I’d like to say that our team got better after the first season with a slow and steady, God-honoring rise that was nothing but a straight line moving upward. But God doesn’t really work like that. At least He didn’t at Baylor. If life is a rollercoaster ride, ours had more dips to endure.

The reality is, our team’s record wasn’t any better the following season. While we actually won one more game, going 9–21 on the year, we only won one Big 12 game. After beating Colorado in our third Big 12 game of the season, we lost the rest, ending the year on a fourteen-game losing streak.

Just like my first year at Baylor, my dad and I spent, at his suggestion, a lot of time reading through the book of Job that second season as well. At one point I said, “Dad, are there any other books of the Bible?” Which served as evidence that we needed to still be reading Job.

As frustrating as the losses could be, Job’s story helped me remember that God was in control. As coaches, we wanted to win as much as possible and move the program forward . . . quickly! But God’s timing is perfect. Looking back, I can see the state of the program when we came to Waco and the struggles we endured. They allowed us to take our time and slowly build the foundation we wanted the program to have. There aren’t too many places where you can lose fourteen games in a row and not really worry about your job security. But thankfully, Baylor was one of them. Through Job, my dad and I worked to see the struggle as an opportunity to draw closer to God and trust Him more.

Trusting God means trusting that His outcome is perfect. But I think that’s aided by looking for and celebrating the wins, however small they might be. For us, those wins were literal, like winning at Purdue. For you, they might be just appreciating some of the people God put in your life to help you through the challenging seasons you encounter.

The summer after that second year, the NCAA finished its investigation into Baylor and the problems we’d had leading up to the tragedy.

In their announcement of their findings, the NCAA said they considered the ultimate punishment: suspension of play for up to two seasons, commonly known as the “death penalty.”

The chairman of the NCAA panel leading the investigation, Alabama law professor Gene Marsh, said his committee “walked up to the edge and then stepped back” from giving us the “death penalty.” In his statement, Marsh credited Baylor’s “honest and very blunt” assessment of the violations and the conditions that led to them. Baylor “took decisive and meaningful action to stop the violations and punish those responsible,” Marsh said. “They didn’t try to be cute, didn’t try to polish the apple.”

But they still gave us an additional punishment.

They made us continue to have reduced scholarships for another season and actually banned us from playing any games outside of our conference in one of the next two seasons.

It was hard. Not “losing your family and livelihood and friends” hard like Job had experienced, but worldly hard.

It looked like I would be spending another season in Job, with Dad. And in truth, my relationship with God is better for it.

There’s no doubt my relationship with Christ grew during that time. When you’re on the mountaintop, it’s so dangerous because you have so many people praising you—and you think you got to the top of the mountain because of you. And that’s when many leaders, from all walks of life, stumble.

When you’re in the valley, it can feel very lonely. No one is around to praise you, and you’re by yourself. But I think God uses those moments when we are by ourselves, and we don’t have anyone else to bring us closer to Him.

Many of us only lean on God when He’s our only option. Maybe stop and think—that’s why He allows us to be in those positions in the first place.

Ideally, you lean on God when you’re at the top. But I think it’s a lot harder to do if you don’t learn to lean on Him when you’re in the valley. Those first three years, and that third year especially, knowing we would have our time in the desert extended, helped solidify in my own heart the kind of foundation we were trying to build at Baylor.

That reliance on God didn’t just come because the results weren’t what we wanted on the court. As a staff, we really tried to see God in everything. The Bible tells us to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5–6, emphasis added).

That’s sometimes easier said than done. But our staff was so good about keeping each other accountable in terms of our faith and making sure we intentionally sought God in all of it.

If we feel like we haven’t put in the work, then that’s on us. But if we put in the work, then we have to trust God that He knows what He wants for us.

Respond

Share a difficult time in your life when you had to seek Jesus and His purpose for your life.

How did He help you? What did you learn about Him?

Prayer

Lord and Savior, I trust You with all that I am and all that I have.