Category: Cowboys (Page 54 of 55)

The Angle of Prayer

July 9, 2007 / Allan / 2 Comments

Eugene Peterson’s Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity holds up prayer, Scripture, and spiritual direction as the three foundational elements to Christian ministry, specifically for “located preachers.” Without continual daily attention to these three very private acts, the preacher’s ministry is shallow and shadow—of this world, not of Heaven.

On the subject of prayer, Peterson articulates the problem for, not just preachers but, all of us. Busyness. We have too much going on. Too many projects, too many phone calls, too many meetings, too many interruptions, too many school and athletic events, and way too much to do even in our leisure time. It’s endemic to our culture in the United States. As preachers, we live right in the middle of two different sets of demands that seem to cancel each other out: we must respond in love and kindness to the demands of the people around us, demands that “refuse to stay within the confines of regular business hours and always exceed our capacity to meet them all” and at the same time we must respond with reverent prayer to the demands of God for our attention, “to listen to him, to take him seriously in the actual circumstances of this calendar day, at this street address, and not bluff our way through by adopting a professionalized role.”

The only kind of prayer and prayer life that is appropriate as a response to our loving Father is the kind of prayer that is only entered into slowly and deliberately, the kind of prayer that takes time. It’s not prayer-on-the-go or prayer-by-request. It means entering large blocks of quiet time with my God where “wonder and adoration have space to develop.”

Is that even possible for an American preacher today?

It has to be.

You know yourself from teaching and from personal experience that seasons of deep meaningful prayer, communion with your God, sharing and listening and speaking with your Father, are always the times in your life of revival and rejuvenation. Empowerment and encouragement. There is certainly room for those on-the-go prayers. Praying in the truck rolling down Airport Freeway or over your Big Mac at MickeyD’s is honored by God. But without intentional chunks of prayer time each day—set-aside time to bask alone in the presence of the Father—our families and our churches suffer. My wife and my three daughters suffer when I neglect prayer. So does the Legacy Church of Christ.

Prayer acknowledges my faith in God to provide all my needs. It recognizes God as the giver of life. And it’s our demanded response to God. He started the conversation. He’s the one who spoke first. Every single thing we say to God in prayer is our response to his initial speaking in our lives.

For the past two years I’ve been involved in a daily Bible reading schedule that includes a Psalm or two every day. And I find myself praying the Psalms. All the time. Just like God’s people have for all time. The Psalms were the prayer book of Israel; they were the prayer book of Jesus; they are the prayer book of the church. At no time in the Hebrew and Christian centuries (except for maybe ours) have the Psalms not been at the very center of all prayer thought and prayer practice. John Calvin said the Psalms are “an anatomy of all the parts of the soul.” Everything that a person can possibly feel, experience, and say is brought into expression before God in the Psalms.

Read the Psalms. Pray the Psalms. Use the language. Use the word-pictures. Use the thoughts in the Psalms to express yourself to God in prayer.

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It’s very, very quiet in the office today. Lance has a group of middle school students at a camp in Oklahoma City and Jason is on his way to Mississippi on a mission trip with the high schoolers. Suzanne’s on the Mississippi trip, Kipi’s locked in to VBS mode with just 12 days to go, and Bonny’s still putting her office back together after the “Flood of July 2.” After five straight days, the buzz of the fans and the de-humidifiers in the building are gone. And today’s the 4th straight day without any rain at Stanglin Manor. The yards are still soggy. But I got more work done outside Saturday than I’ve done combined since we moved in. Edging the curb and driveway with a weedeater was like digging a trench with a cereal spoon. I battled it for well over an hour. I think it ended in a draw.

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There are 52 days until football season and my #52 is another Steeler from the ’70s, center Mike Webster. He was tough. He played in every single game during his first ten seasons, he started in 150 straight games, and missed only four total in his 16 NFL seasons. He won four Super Bowls with the Steelers and ended his career with the Chiefs.

Getting caught up on the countdown from the weekend will be a little more fun. #53 is not Bob Breunig, although he deserves honorable mention. My #53 is a great two-way star for the OU Sooners during the ’50s, linebacker/center Jerry Tubbs. Tubbs never lost a single football game during his three year career at Oklahoma. His 31 wins were part of that legendary 47-game winning streak and two national titles from 1954-56. He was an All-America at linebacker, he won the Walter Camp Award, and he actually finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting in 1956.

Tubbs was the Chicago Cardinals top pick in the ’57 draft. And he was acquired by the Dallas Cowboys in 1960 during their expansion draft. After he finished playing, Tubbs served as an assistant coach for the Cowboys under Tom Landry for 21 years, an integral part of that run of five Super Bowl appearances in the ’70s. And to top it off, before any of his college and pro success, Tubbs won two Texas State High School Football Championships at Breckenridge.

And #54 is also a long-time Dallas Cowboy, linebacker Chuck Howley. He played three seasons for the Bears before coming to Dallas for draft picks in 1961 and played for Landry for 13 years. He went to six Pro Bowls and two Super Bowls, losing the heartbreaker in the Blunder Bowl on Jim O’Brien’s field goal and winning big the following year over Miami. Howley was named the MVP of Super Bowl VI, the only MVP ever to be named from the losing team. Landry called Howley “the best linebacker I ever saw.” And that’s good enough for me.

Now, to all you Randy White fans, let me present a technicality. I get the “Manster” and Howley both on my list because Randy White wore the #94 in college at Maryland. One of these days I’m going to list all 99 of the best football players ever on this blog and you’ll see White at #94. We were doing the countdown on 990AM one summer and actually had the equipment manager at Maryland, who was there back when White played, custom make a replica Randy White #94 Terrapin jersey for us. We were doing our show live from some pool hall somewhere in North Dallas and had Randy White there with us live and he gave the jersey away in a drawing.

The other Randy White story involves Carrie-Anne. White was signing autographs at some shoe store or something at a mall in Austin. This was back in 1990 or ’91. We didn’t have kids yet. And White actually stopped C-A and asked her if she wanted his autograph. She replied, “No, not really.” And that floored him. He couldn’t believe it. He asked her two or three more times, “Are you sure you don’t want my autograph?” And she just kept saying, “No, not really, no big deal, no thanks.” It was so funny. It has to be the only time in history a Dallas Cowboys Hall of Famer has ever been rejected like that.

Tomorrow’s #51 requires no explanations. It’s a no-brainer. Automatic. Hands-down. No debate.

Peace,

Allan

A Cry to Preachers

July 6, 2007 / Allan / 5 Comments

“American preachers are abandoning their posts, left and right, at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationery and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts and their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn’t the remotest connection with what the church’s preachers have done for most of twenty centuries.”

This is how Eugene Peterson’s Working the Angles begins. I just finished it last night. What a fantastic book. Here’s the second paragraph:

“A few of us are angry about it. We are angry because we have been deserted. It is bitterly disappointing to enter a room full of people whom you have every reason to expect share the quest and commitments of pastoral work and find within ten minutes they most definitely do not. They talk of image and statistics. They drop names. They discuss influence and status. Matters of God and the soul and Scripture are not grist for their mills. The preachers of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeepers’ concerns—how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money.”

Peterson’s book is a call to preachers to be committed to the three disciplines that shape our relationships with our God and our ministries to him. Those disciplines are prayer, Scripture, and spiritual direction. A minister of the Word is not a preacher, not a pastor in the purest sense, if his life is not defined by continual conversation with the Father, constant immersion in the Scriptures, and a daily practice of giving spiritual direction to others.

The premise is that, while all three of these “angles” are essential, all three of them are extremely private. Our prayer lives as preachers, our reading of the Word, and our conversations with others are not public knowledge. There’s no hoopla or praise or affirmation from others when we commit to these foundational disciplines. And there’s not really anyone in our churches urging us or demanding us to stick with it.

Again, from Working the Angles:

“Besides being basic, these three acts are quiet. They do not call attention to themselves and so are often not attended to. In the clamorous world of pastoral work nobody yells at us to engage in these acts. It is possible to do pastoral work to the satisfaction of the people who judge our competence and pay our salaries without being either diligent or skilled in them. Since almost never does anyone notice whether we do these things or not, and only occasionally does someone ask that we do them, these three acts of ministry suffer widespread neglect.”

The hard part of this is that, because of where we live and the way we live in America, we’re all dominated by a strong sense of self instead of a strong sense of God. Most of the people in our churches and the people we meet in our communities are very concerned about self. And when we, as preachers, deal with them and their primary concerns of self—directing, counseling, instructing, encouraging, doing tasks for them—they give us high praise in our jobs as preachers. And whether we deal with God or not isn’t really considered.

Here’s the last quote: “It is very difficult to do one thing when most of the people around us are asking us to do something quite different, especially when these people are nice, intelligent, treat us with respect, and pay our salaries.”

(Along those lines—paying our salaries—my great friend Jim Gardner has blogged today about the professional preacher versus the prophet. It’s excellent. “We are not professionals!” You have to read it. It’s called “Professional Pressure.” Click here as soon as you are done with mine. It’s good.)

I’ll spend the first three days of next week discussing these three “angles” from Peterson’s book: prayer, Scripture, and spiritual direction. I think it’ll challenge you in the way you walk in your own Christian life. And maybe it’ll help shape the way you view your preacher and his role in your church and in your life.

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For over four years I played full-court pickup basketball early in the morning three days a week. When we moved to Marble Falls for the two years at Austin Grad, I could only find a game once a week up in Burnet. But for the last year we were there, I didn’t play once. I was doing much more preaching at Marble Falls, I was making monthly trips up here to Legacy, that second year of school demanded much more time and energy than the first year, exit exams, moving plans, on and on it went. I haven’t played in over a year.

Until yesterday. Our Junior High Youth Minister (he’s not in Junior High. He works with our Junior High kids) Lance Parrish plays a weekly game with several of the other area youth ministers and church workers from all over Tarrant County at the gym at Ft. Worth Christian. Super great guys. Very competitive and very friendly. Fairly evenly matched. Exactly what I’ve been looking for.

Except we’re playing inside the gym at Ft. Worth Christian. For a DC boy, that’s kind of weird. I was raised to strongly dislike FWC. We were taught and coached that beating the Cardinals was just about the noblest thing we could ever do in our lives. Just walking into that place yesterday was so very surreal. Because I have been there so many times before. In a different time. Under different circumstances. A completely different world. But it still looked exactly as I remembered it. Everything’s red. The huge cardinal logos on the court and up on the walls and the scoreboard. The red seats where I sat many, many times and cheered on the Chargers in our epic battles with our bitter rivals. I’m certain I yelled some ugly things on occasion toward the Cardinals players and coaches in that very gym. Now, that was a long time ago—well over 20 years ago. But it was still weird.

Everyone I met and played with was very welcoming and I had a great time. I’m looking forward to making it a weekly ritual.

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Super great meeting last night with the Bible class teachers and Ministry Leaders regarding the new Legacy Church website! Thank you to John West who’s spearheading our efforts to better communicate within the church family and in our broader community. John’s not an official part of the staff. But he’s married to it.

I walked into the meeting just a couple of minutes before it started and as I was walking down the aisle Paul Dennis shouted, “If #55 is not Lee Roy Jordan, I’m never reading your blog again!”

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Of course it’s Lee Roy Jordan. Who else could it be, Brian Bosworth?

Jordan actually wore the number 54 at Alabama because he played both ways, as a linebacker and an offensive center. But to me, he’s always going to be the #55 he wore as the Dallas Cowboys middle linebacker for 14 seasons. Jordan was the Cowboys number one pick in 1963 and “quarterbacked” that Doomsday Defense to three Super Bowls. He was there for every play of those difficult transition from “Next Year’s Champions” to “Super Bowl Champions.” Jordan holds the Cowboys team record for most solo tackles in a career at 743. And he was just passed by Darren Woodson three seasons ago for most total career tackles (1,236 solos & assists combined). Jordan’s solo tackles in a game against the Eagles in 1971 is still a team record.

A contract holdout made things personal between Jordan and Tex Schramm, which kept Jordan out of the Ring of Honor until Jerry Wayne bought the team in ’89 and made things right. That was about the only thing, P.R.-wise, Jerry did right in ’89.

Peace,

Allan

Three Numbers, Mark Cuban, and a 60-Second Prayer

June 30, 2007 / Allan / 1 Comment

I got so wrapped up in writing yesterday’s post about the origin of the Four Horsemen (not THESE four horsemen!!!) I completely forgot about the 80-days of football. Sorry about that. Let’s get caught up.

Yesterday was #62, Dallas Cowboys glory-days center John Fitzgerald. Fitz anchored the middle of that Cowboys offensive line from 1971-1980, helping lead the team to seven NFC Championship Games, four Super Bowls, and two World Championships. When Tom Landry first suggested the shotgun formation to Roger Staubach, it all really hinged on Fitzgerald. And the rest is history. Former Texas and Denver Broncos offensive lineman Dan Neil, who visited us at the Marble Falls Church ocassionally back in the day, gets honorable mention. He’s co-hosting a midday sports talk show now in Austin with old Ticket workhorse Kevin Scott. And Jerry Fontenot, of Aggies and Bears and Saints fame, deserves a mention. But America’s Center, John Fitzgerald, is my #62.

#61 is a guy you’ve probably never heard of. But he was truly the first ever genuine middle linebacker. He practically invented the position. And it’s only fitting he played his career in Chicago with the Bears and became the great ancestor to the Monsters of the Midway. Bill George (two first names) was the Bears number-two pick out of Wake Forest in 1951 as a noseguard. Every team in football played a five-man front and George was drafted to anchor that Bears defensive line. But in a game against the Eagles that rookie season, George stood up and backed away from the line right before the snap and tackled the running back after just a one yard gain. On the very next play, George did the same thing and wound up making an interception. For the rest of that game George lined up in a standing position about six yards off the ball, and the 4-3 defense and the middle linebacker were born.

Tomorrow, Sunday, is day 60 in the countdown. But I’ll go ahead and do it today. It’s the weekend, and this is kinda fun stuff anyway. #60 is one of those no-brainers. Tommy Nobis is the hands-down best ever player to wear the number. Nobis was an incredible two-way player at Texas, the only sophomore starter on the 1963 National Championship team. Darrell Royal called him the best two-way player he ever coached. A guard on the offensive line and a middle linebacker on defense, Nobis averaged 20 tackles per game, he made All-America twice, All-SWC twice, he was the Longhorns team MVP in ’64 and ’65, team captain in ’65, he won the Outland Trophy in ’65, and finished seventh in the Heisman voting. Texas went 27-5 during Nobis’ three years as a Longhorn. He was Texas’ first-ever overall number-one NFL pick when the Atlanta Falcons drafted him in 1966. The AFL Houston Oilers also picked him number-one, but Nobis signed with the more traditional and stable NFL franchise. He led the Falcons in tackles nine of his 11 seasons. He was NFL Rookie of the Year in ’66. And he played in five Pro Bowls. Following his retirement, Nobis worked for years in the Falcons front office. And he still serves the team as a consultant. Super nice guy out of San Antonio Jefferson High School. One of the all-time greats.

(I must also pay respects to Chuck Bednarik. Yes, he was a great #60 and deserving of mention. But mainly because I love this picture of Bednarik standing over the fallen Frank Gifford.)

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I don’t want to be overly critical of Mark Cuban. That’s not the stated or intended purpose of this blog. But it is the weekend. Give me a little freedom here. I believe he may be the worst owner in the history of professional sports in Dallas. And, good night, we’ve had some awful ones. Bum Bright. Eddie Chiles. Ross Perot, Jr. But has any one owner, repeatedly and consistently, singlehandedly embarassed his team, his league, and his city more than Cuban? His whining after Game Five of the Finals against Miami last year was so childish and petty. And it was so bad that even Avery Johnson got caught up in it. The team took the cue from Cuban and the rhetoric was so bad and embarassing during the two days between Games 5 & 6, I actually rooted for the Heat in that last game. It’s awful.

His reality show. Remember? The most self-serving, egotistical, embarassing thing any owner has ever done in the history of professional sports. Ever. His in-game behavior is childish at best. I could go on and on. I don’t mean to. I really think he’s awful. I can stand outrageous. But childish and petty and embarassing are really too much.

And now he’s suing former Mavs coach and GM Don Nelson because Nellie used “inside information” to destroy Dallas in the first round of the playoffs two months ago. What?!? The claims in the suit are ridiculous. Randy Galloway’s column sums up most of it. His best line in the story is this: you wanna sue somebody over the Golden State series, why not sue Dirk? Suing an opposing coach for using insider information after that coach thumps your team in an historic upset sounds like something a five-year-old would do. But certainly not any right-thinking adult. Cuban makes it very hard to root for the Mavs.

I’m sure I’ll be in a better mood tonight at the Medina Children’s Home Auction and Dinner. Avery Johnson is the guest speaker. I see on Richard Brown’s run sheet that Avery gets 20 minutes to speak. And I’ve been allotted one minute for the opening prayer. 60-seconds! I’m scheduled to pray at 7:16 and then Dan Branch is making an announcement about dinner and the end of the auction at 7:17. Can you imagine?

Have a great weekend.

Peace,

Allan

Ministry in the Interruptions

June 25, 2007 / Allan / 3 Comments

Christian ministry is a series of interruptions. And it’s our attitude toward and our selfless service in those interruptions that define our ministries.

My outlook on time and my control over my time was radically altered almost 20 years ago, the very first time I read C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. Screwtape, the affectionate devil, tells his protege nephew in chapter 11 that “man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift.”

Screwtape goes on to say that if in our “total service of the Enemy (God)” he demanded one day for us to do nothing more than listen for a half hour to the “conversation of a foolish woman,” we would be much relieved and happy to serve. If, one day, that’s all God wanted, just for you to pay attention for a little while to this person who needs you to listen, we’d be thrilled to obey. We’d be honored that God would choose us to be used by him in that way, that day. And then Screwtape concludes his thought by telling Wormwood, “if the man thinks about this assumption for a moment, even he is bound to realize that he is actually in this situation every day.”

Jesus, the Christ, is our perfect example of selfless service. And, apart from the cross, that service is best seen in the interruptions to his schedule. Jesus washed feet, hugged lepers, and called tax collectors down out of trees. Despite the strain on his schedule and the personal risk to his reputation and his position, people always came first to the Son of God. When a blind man or a beggar or a lonely woman called out to Jesus, he didn’t reschedule them or avoid them because it wasn’t in his plans that day. He healed them. He taught them. He served them.

Christian ministry is not in the things we schedule as much as in the interruptions to those schedules.

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Speaking of schedules, there are several big items on the calendar this week. Here at Legacy we’re honored to host the annual National Deaf Christian Workshop. Over 500 deaf Christians from all over the country are meeting here tonight through Thursday for a series of sessions revolving around the Texas-inspired theme “Deep in the Heart of God.” The lectures and classes focus on spiritual matters and deaf ministry issues and include such topics as “Improving Church Interpreting,” “Facial Expression in Interpreting,” and “A Heart for Interpreting.” This place has been buzzing with activity since before 7:00 this morning. And the unmistakable energy and enthusiasm in the air will only build through the week up to Tom Ramey’s message “Hearts That Are Heaven Bound” Thursday night. Congratulations to our own deaf minister Terry Heidecker and his wife Cindy, Bill and Katie Baker, and the dozens of others who’ve worked so hard to pull this off. May our God bless the workshop and use the workshop to spread the borders of the Kingdom!

I’ll begin a new tradition with some old friends this Friday in Dallas. The Four Horsemen are riding together with increased frequency and fervor. Woe to those who would………

Nevermind. More on that Friday.

And this Saturday night is the annual Medina Children’s Home Dinner and Auction at the Fairmont in downtown Dallas. I’ve been privileged in the past to work with my good friends David & Linda Cause in gathering autographed items from the Rangers and Stars and Mavericks to be auctioned off at the dinner. But this year I’m honored to be leading the invocation. Mavericks coach Avery Johnson is the guest speaker. And I’m looking forward to a wonderful night with dear friends to support a great cause.

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The resource page is beginning to take some kind of shape. Check it out for bulletin articles, book reviews, exegetical papers, and essays I’ve written in the past. And feel free to use them anywhere and anytime you’d like.

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Finally, there are 66 days until football season. And #66 in the countdown is the Packers long-time Hall of Fame middle linebacker Ray Nitschke. Nitschke was the core of the Green Bay defense during their dynasty days of the ’60s. They won five NFL titles in seven years, including the first two Super Bowls with Nitschke wreaking havoc for opposing quarterbacks and enforcing his will on opposing running backs. He kept his teeth on a shelf in his locker. His autobiography was entitled “Mean on Sunday.” In 1969 he was named the best linebacker in the history of the NFL. He was the first Packers defender from the ’60s to get into the Hall of Fame. And it’s amazing to me that he only played in one Pro Bowl. And of course, in that one Pro Bowl, in 1964, he returned an interception for a TD. Ray Nitschke is, without doubt, the best player to ever wear #66.

Catching up from the weekend (there’s gotta be a better way to do this): Russell Maryland is my #67. Maryland won two national championships and the Outland Trophy at the University of Miami, he won three Super Bowls with the Cowboys as their #1 draft pick in ’91, and finished his career with the Raiders and Packers. He was a great football player on great teams. His timing was impeccable. But more than that, he’s a really great guy. I had the pleasure of working with Russell at a benefit golf tournament three years ago for Athletes in Action and listened to him at dinner passionately tell the golfers about his conversion to Christ and his life as a disciple. God bless him and John Weber, John Wetteland, and Sean Payton for the work they’re doing for our Lord.

And #68 is old Cowboys nemesis L. C. Greenwood. Out of little bitty Arkansas Pine Bluff, he was a 10th round pick of the Steelers, but became the team’s all-time leading sack man with 73-1/2. On the famed Steel Curtain defense he played left defensive end next to Mean Joe Green, Ernie Holmes, and Dwight White; a defensive line that posted five shutouts in the last eight games of 1976. He wore those awful gold high top cleats, remember? And the NFL fined the team after every single game for the uniform violation. And Art Rooney wrote the checks with a smile. Greenwood sacked Roger Staubach three times in Super Bowl X. He was 6’6″, super quick, and unstoppable coming around that corner. Cowboys offensive lineman Herb Scott gets my #68 honorable mention. But Greenwood’s the best.

Peace,

Allan

This Culture Is Overrated

June 20, 2007 / Allan / 10 Comments

“In leaning over to speak to the modern world, I fear we may have fallen in.”

~William Willimon, 1997

Willimon’s article from the Winter 1997 issue of Leadership should be required reading for every preacher and elder, and probably for every church member. I try to read it at least once or twice a month to remind me of what’s important and to shape my approach to Scripture and to preaching. I hear so often, daily it seems, that we need to reach the culture, we need to speak to the culture, we need to adapt what we do and how we do it to the culture. I find that a lot of the decisions we make regarding “church” are made in reaction to or in an effort to reach out to or even reflect our culture.

Willimon says, “the Bible doesn’t want to speak to the modern world; the Bible wants to convert the modern world.” Most of the time, I think, we treat our culture as if it were a fact, a reality to which we’re obligated to adjust, instead of merely one way of looking at things or doing things with which we might argue.

Again, Willimon: “Christianity is a distinct culture with its own vocabulary, grammar, and practices. Too often, when we try to speak to our culture, we merely adopt the culture of the moment rather than present the gospel to the culture.”

“The point is not to speak to the culture, “Willimon continues, “the point is to change it. And God’s appointed means of producing change is called ‘church.'”

And I think the apostle Paul would agree.

“Since you died with Christ to the basic principals of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules?” ~Colossians 2:20

May we see our culture for what it is, a set of systems and values that are opposed to Christ and his Church. And may we strive together to change the culture for him and the Kingdom, not adapt to it.

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The Fort Worth Star-Telegram yesterday led off the front of the Sports section with a question: are these ’07 Rangers the worst team in the history of DFW professional sports? They compared the team to Jimmy Johnson’s first Cowboys squad that went 1-15 in 1989. (Troy Aikman was the second leading rusher on that team with 300 yards. Yikes!) And they also brought up the Mavericks ’92-93 team that went 11-71 under the leadership of Richie Adubato AND Gar Heard. The Rangers are 26-44, 18 games back, and it’s not even July. Everything Jon Daniels has touched has blown up in his face. And Hicks just gave him the dreaded two-year contract extension / vote of confidence. I don’t think they’re the worst team ever in DFW. Probably not even the worst team ever in Arlington. Not yet.

Talking about the futility of past teams reminds me of the futility of our current teams. The Stars can’t get out of the first round, the Mavs embarrased all of us with their historic flop, the Cowboys coach is Wade Phillips, and the Rangers are marketing Sammy Sosa. A great friend already here at Legacy, Paul Dennis (two first names! That’s a radio thing!) pointed me to Jeremiah 12:5 and related it to the false hopes of the sports fans who think our teams are just one player or one tweak away from winning a championship. “If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses?”

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Finally, there are only 71 more days until football season. And my all-time #71 is the undisputed leader of the Fearsome Foursome of the Los Angeles Rams, Merlin Olsen. He played tackle on the left side with Deacon Jones for most of his 15 NFL seasons and went to a record 14 straight Pro Bowls. Olsen pioneered the art of stunting and looping from the tackle position to get to the QB. He was big, he was fast, he was agile, and he was super smart. And he dominated. And, amazingly, he never once played in a league championship or a Super Bowl. Of course, my girls only know Merlin Olsen as Jonathon Garvey on Little House on the Prarie. He was also Father Murphy and the long-time spokesman for FTD Florists.

And I know he wore #74 while he was with the Rams. But he wore #71 as a two-time All-America and Outland Trophy winner with the Fightin’ Aggies of Utah State. That’s not cheating. That’s making sure I get Olsen and Bob Lilly on the list.

Peace,

Allan

The Power of Prayer

June 19, 2007 / Allan / 1 Comment

“To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the powers of the world.” ~Karl Barth

In Exodus 17, Joshua is fighting the Amalekites at Rephidim. Moses has taken Aaron and Hur to the top of a nearby hill where Moses lifts his hands to God in prayer on behalf of Israel’s warriors. As long as his hands are up, God gives his children the victory. When his hands fall, the enemy prevails. It doesn’t take long for Aaron and Hur to recognize this. So they position themselves on either side of their aging leader and hold his arms up for him until Joshua and his army have defeated the foe.

Two pictures of the power of prayer are obvious here.

One, while the battles and skirmishes and fights are taking place in the valley, the real war is being waged on the hill. That’s where the ultimate outcome of the conflict is decided. God is the one controlling the entire situation. And his response is directly, unambiguously, related to the attitude and the practice of continual prayer.

Two, prayer is a team effort. It’s never just one person praying on behalf of the whole congregation of God’s children. It’s all of God’s people working together to lift up the arms of those who are weary, to pray with those who are burdened with the fight, to support those who love us and intercede for us with our own prayers.

After the battle with the Amalekites, Moses calls the place “The Lord is my Banner” because “hands were lifted up to the throne of the Lord.” May our lives reflect a constant attitude of prayer to our Father on behalf of those in the fight.

72 days until football season. And my greatest all-time #72 is NOT the flash-in-the-pan Fridge. To me, William Perry stands for everything that has corrupted professional football. Mike Ditka’s single worst coaching decision was to allow Perry the TD plunge in Walter Payton’s only Super Bowl. Perry became literally and figuratively bigger than his team and larger than life.

It’s also not long-time Cardinal Dan Dierdorf whose TV analysis and commentary aren’t quite bad enough to detract from his outstanding Hall of Fame playing career.

My #72 will always be Ed “Too Tall” Jones.

The first time Jones ever played organized football was in college at Tennessee State. He was a 6’9″ basketball player! But the Cowboys drafted him #1 overall in 1974 and he dominated the defensive end position in the NFC East for 15 seasons. He still today holds Cowboys records for most starts (203), most games played (224), and most fumble recoveries (19). Opposing quarterbacks couldn’t see over him and couldn’t run around him. He singlehandedly changed the other team’s gameplan. He racked up 106 career sacks despite playing ten years before the stat became official. He blocked seven field goals, collected 1,032 tackles, and in his one year out of football to try his hand at professional boxing he went 6-0 with 5 knockouts! One of my most prized possessions is an autographed practice jersey that Jones wore during the ’83 season. It’s been washed. Too Tall Jones had one of the best nicknames in sports. And he’s the all-time #72.

Peace,

Allan

Category: Cowboys (Page 54 of 55)

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