This lesson is perhaps one of the most important and powerful truths one will ever come across. Wrap your head and heart around this one very tightly. Whatever you do, wherever you go, learn this: Play the ball from where it lies, right now, today.
There isn’t anything you can do about what happened in the first half of play. If we’re talking football, there isn’t anything you can do, right now, about a fumble or a turnover seven snaps ago. If you are 2nd down and 3, a good or a bad play, on 1st down can be altered, erased, or done differently. Let’s consider something that Paul the Apostle said to the Philippians…
“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 3:13-14, KJV
There isn’t anything you can do about yesterday and you can’t control what might or might not happen tomorrow. You can only worry about today. You can only play the ball from where it lies, right now, today. That should be your focus. That should be your primary concern. Where is the ball placed today? What is your biggest challenge today. Who can you help, or pray for, or be a blessing on…today. Jesus said it another way, “Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.”
Philippians 3:13 in context:
10That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; 11If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. 12Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. 13Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, 14I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. 15Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. 16Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing.
Philippians 3:10-16, KJV