End Zone Living

Pastor Randy Corbin, Transitional Lead Pastor

There is something safe about mid-field living.  On the gridiron of life, mid-field living and ministry is not as intense or passionate.  We can go ten or fifteen yards in either direction and there is little strong emotion or rarely an outbreak of controversy or anger.  If there is any place on the field where we find ourselves relaxing a little more or slacking off a bit, it is mid-field where not much is at stake.

Of course, real advance takes place when we become end-zone people.  Getting ourselves down to the goal line requires focus, purpose, sold-out living for Christ and His work.  Living there, we are reliant on God’s grace and power if we are to make a difference.  There we cannot yield to other fascinations and interests.  End zone people live all out for God and have no tolerance for sin and practices which will hurt their focus on the goal line.

End-zone people live absolutely sold out to God.  They keep no hidden closets of sin or self.  They do not water down their discretionary time with excessive pleasures that only provide hours of entertainment to warm one’s self.  Such men and women have absolutely no tolerance the smallest of lies or lusts.  Their eyes are on the end-zone. 

While others stay mid-field, thinking about the parties to follow and the pleasures to enjoy, end zone people are pushing only to get the ball over the line.  Each day they live for that goal.  So, they discipline their minds and lives.

The New Year only confirms once again that time is going somewhere.  We can play with our relationship with Jesus mid-field, doing all the professional rituals while our hearts cool and our interests are more out in the city than getting the ball down to the end-zone. 

Mid-field people feel they can stay in the game and still maintain a life of selfish pleasure and quiet sins, tolerating sins of anger, arrogance, and apathy.

My call for all of us is to become serious end-zone people:  men and women who will move beyond information to transformation, beyond duty to delight, beyond keepers of the aquarium to serious fishers of men, and beyond mechanical routine to a passionate drive to know Jesus Christ.

We will find those kinds of people down at the end-zone, living all of Jesus and giving all of themselves to the mission of completing Christ’s Commission.  So, on which part of the field are you and I?  Pause long enough and your heart will tell you.