The Coach's Voice

“Stand up!”

That’s all I heard him say. My coach was less than four meters away, standing in my corner. The clock was ticking. It was 30 seconds into the third round. Where was I? I was wrestling in my first high school tournament. C bracket. The place coaches put freshmen to find out what they are made of.

“Stand up!”

Tied with less than a minute to go, you’d think standing up was easy. Not really, especially when your opponent is on top, trying his best to hold you down. Especially when he knows if I stand up and escape, I will be ahead by one point. He also knows if I maintain that lead I will win the match and the bracket.

“Stand up!”

My coach only had one thing to say. He wanted me to win. He wanted me to stand up and face my opponent. I could hear his voice and the sound of the referee’s whistle. Everything else was a jumbled mess of incoherent sounds. With labored effort I push myself up and try to get into a stable standing position.

As I get to my feet my opponent pushes me to the edge of the mat. He pushes me out. We repeat this dance of me standing up, him pushing me out. He’s trying to push me out because he knows I can break his grasp. The referee gives him a warning. If he pushes me out again the referee will award me a point; my opponent is stalling. So he tries something new.

Slam!

He picked me up and threw me to down. I hear my coach yelling his encouragement.

“Stand up!”

I stand up. 45 seconds left.

Slam!

Face down, but in a stable base. I stand up again.

Slam! 36 seconds.

I sense a pattern developing.

“Stand up!”

Slam! 28 seconds.

The crowd doesn’t like that I’m getting slammed. My parents don’t like it either. I am completely oblivious. I only hear one voice.

“Stand up!”

Slam!

The referee gives my opponent a warning. He’s haphazardly throwing me into the mat now. It’s getting dangerous.

We reset in the middle. Him on top. Me on bottom.

“Stand up!”

Slam! 12 seconds

“Stand up!”

Slam!

The referee awards me 1 point

My opponent releases me to try and tie the match. 6 seconds

I turn and face him.

“Takedown!”

I shoot for my opponent’s legs. We scramble. Even though I’m ahead and completely exhausted I go on the offensive. My opponent’s mentally fatigued, freaked out by the clock and can barely defend himself. He doesn’t get a chance to recover.

The whistle blows. Match over. I win by sheer guts. I win because I listened to my coach.

That was how I won my first wrestling tournament. But more importantly it’s how I learned to listen for my coach’s voice, a skill that took me far as a wrestler.

Listening to the voice of a coach is everything in wrestling. The coach’s perspective is greater than that of the man in the ring. The coach sees openings in an opponent’s defense, calls out a move, and if the wrestler listens, it can be the subtle difference between victory and defeat.

The problem with listening to the coach? You have to tune out a lot of background noise, and I’m not talking about the noise of the crowd. Not only are your ears mostly covered, you literally have someone else grappling with you while you try to understand what your coach is saying. Sometimes it’s not clear, which is why wrestling coaches learn to say simple phrases. It’s all you can understand in intense situations.

As a wrestler you get to make the choice. “Is my coach telling me something I can do?” In the split second between hearing and taking action, the coach’s advice is being run through an internal filter. A filter gauging personal strength and endurance, fatigue, the opponent’s fitness level, and his response to previous moves. And whether or not you think your coach is crazy.

The best always are.

Hearing a wrestling coach’s voice and responding by doing is the difference between victory and defeat. Listening to our heavenly Coach is the difference between life and death: blessings and curses. Yet there is one big problem stopping us from, “What does our heavenly Coach sound like?”

While I can’t tell you the audible qualities of our heavenly Coach’s voice, I can tell you his voice brings calm in the chaos. Even when he’s asking you to give something you don’t feel you have. It’s those give and take moments that define athletes. It’s these same moments that define us human yet heavenly athletes.  It’s the smallest margin by which we win. Yet that margin comes down to a simple choice, “Will I listen to what my Coach is asking me to do?”

As we filter through what our Coach is asking of us, we hit personal barriers. We start asking questions like, “Does my Coach care about me, or does He care more about winning? Is He asking of me something I can actually do? Does He care how I come out of this?” We ask these questions because we don’t completely trust our Coach. A coach has to build trust into his athletes. Often times that’s a difficult task. It’s difficult until we have a moment of trust with our Coach, a moment where we stretch ourselves, doing what we thought was ridiculous: we have to take a risk. In that moment we give our Coach a chance, and we find out how much He cares for us and wants what is best for us.

But isn’t the heavenly Coach a bad coach? Doesn’t he break clipboards, flip chairs, yell at officials and make us do extra conditioning? Isn’t he mean and exacting? Asking us to do what we’ve never done before, speaking loudly to us when we do things wrong. Isn’t God a jerk?

We think this way when we’ve misunderstood God, and haven’t heard his voice. The big jerk in the sky comes from missing who he is.

Let me tell you a story.

When God created Adam and Eve, he blessed them saying, “go out, be fruitful and multiply.” He placed them in a garden where he planted two trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good & evil. He told them they could eat from any tree in the garden, except the tree of the knowledge of good & evil, saying, “if you eat of it, you will die.” Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good & evil, not from the tree of life. Because they ate from the tree, they found out they were naked and decided to hide from God. God walked after then asking, “Where are you?” After they confessed, although they still blamed someone else for their mistake, God cursed them making their fruitfulness and multiplication much more difficult. Before God removed them from the garden, he made clothes for them and covered their shame, because there was nothing they could do to cover their mistake.

The point of this story is simple, God’s blessing became God’s curse. While God intended Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of life, they chose to eat from a different tree. They decided to disobey the Coach. The Coach gave his athletes a choice. Even though they failed Him, God gave them a second chance. Even though it meant giving up what the Coach wanted for his athletes in the first place. Life.

God has always wanted life for His athletes. Not all of them choose life. They choose a harder more difficult path. Instead of listening to the simple commands of the coach, they choose the Coach’s curse instead of his blessing. He always offers the blessing first. Even when we fail to listen, he gives us a second chance.

How do we obtain his blessing? We listen to Him, become familiar with His voice, and do as He asks. Just like Adam and Eve, God has given us a second chance.