S05E010, Healthy Competition, Endurance

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On this episode, we focus on the concept of Godly competition.

Endurance is your weekly spiritual workout, whether you think of yourself as a beginner, an intermediate, or advanced!

#GoDeeper

Steven begins GoDeeper this week, by giving examples of competition in everyday life. He briefly reminisces over Queen Elizabeth’s entrance to the 2012 Olympic games.

Steven gives us one of his favourite accounts in Scripture, compares competitiveness to pride using an example from his own life, and warns against cheating. He also warns spectators against favouritism.

Ultimately, he challenges us all to be good sports.

You can read the GoDeeper transcript here.

#GoDo

For the final segment, Nathan asks Steven some questions about his talk:

1. I gather competition usually makes us perform better, whether that be in exercise, business, or other areas. Is that right?
2. I suppose good, Godly competition must be accompanied by humility and gentleness?
3. Are you sure you beat me home that time you mentioned?

Check out this week’s episode to find out how Steven answers Nathan’s questions.

Steven and Nathan

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Transcript

Nathan 0:23
Hello, and welcome to Endurance your weekly spiritual workout. This week's episode is titled Healthy Competition. And as the name suggests, we're looking at the idea of competition in our everyday lives, how to have a godly competition, how to use our competitive, natural, competitive nature's wisely.

Nathan 0:43
Of course, a race would be pointless if there were no competition, it would not be worthwhile. So, competition is important and it is useful. But how do we use it in a biblical way? I'm Nathan. And as always, if you want to keep up to date with all that we produce, including these episodes of Endurance, you can sign up to our newsletter at www.BerryBunch.family. Steven's going to unpack this subject for a shortly. Enjoy.

Steven 1:23
Don't avoid a challenge just because you might fail, you can learn a lot from failing. #SpeakTruth.

#GoDeeper Transcript

Steven 1:30
So this is another GoDeeper with me, Steven. This is where we go deeper into the topic of Endurance, which is of course healthy competition, as Nathan has already told us. So let's begin. So in exercise, obviously, we, when we think of competition in exercise, we think of the Olympics or stuff like that. Immediately, I'm thinking of the Queen's parachuting into, sorry, the Queen parachuting into the Olympic Games in 2012. Such a shame that she passed away. Anyway, we also think of in life, we compete, perhaps for jobs. So you think of recently had the choosing of the, what do you call them? Leader of the Conservative Party, for example.

Steven 2:17
So that kind of aspect of competition, so they're were both competing for the position as leader of the Conservative Party, that is competition in sort of less exciting things of life. If I switch to John 20, 1 to 4. On the first day of the week, Mary, oh, sorry, this is around after Jesus had died on the cross.

Steven 2:40
On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark. She saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she went running to Simon Peter and to the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said to them, they've taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don't know where they put him. Now we comes to the crucial bit here. At that Peter and the other disciple went out heading for the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter, and got to the tomb first.

Steven 3:06
So the point is that, it's not all that relevant a passage of Scripture, but we have two people here running, and one of them wins. It's a bit of competition in the Bible. Which I just love. It's just so funny that passage, just in amongst Jesus dying on the cross, I just love that bit of scripture. So some examples of competition in my own life would be, not too long, recently I went for a run about the same time that Nathan went for a run.

Steven 3:36
We went separate routes. Don't know why, really, we should just gone together. Anyway, we went separate routes, and we're both going the same distance. Five kilometres and Nathan went, and I thought, right, I must beat him. So I went really fast. And I came back and I did beat him. I won't tell you by how much to protect the innocent. But the point is that it was bit of a competitive attitude going on there. Or was it? Perhaps it was more pride. I didn't want my younger brother to be any faster than me. So I pushed myself really hard to make sure I came back before he did. That's not so much competition as pride.

Steven 4:12
And there is a difference between a bit of healthy competition and being proud. As we know, pride comes before a fall, it's not a good thing to have. So yeah, avoid pride in any sort of healthy competition. You just need to avoid pride. Right, 2 Timothy 2, 5 says. Also if anyone competes as an athlete, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. So there we have a passage of scripture telling us that we shouldn't cheat, basically.

Steven 4:42
Any amount of healthy competition is without any cheating. Cheating is just bad in competition. We're often told that we shouldn't have any favouritism or comparison. We shouldn't compare ourselves to others. But if you compete, isn't that kind of like comparing yourself to others. It's a chewy one. But we have some obvious scriptures here saying that you shouldn't have any favouritism. For there is no favouritism with God. Romans 2, 11.

Steven 5:13
If however you show favouritism you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. James 2, 9. So we know that favouritism is bad. So when, as spectators, you're watching a sport you shouldn't favourite. You shouldn't show favouritism to one player more than another. You need to be generally speaking, just a good sport encouraging every single person. So in terms of competition, there's two aspects, as a competitor and as a spectator. So generally speaking, we just need to be a good sport, in both scenarios.

Steven 5:49
Healthy competition is about being a good sport really simply. And being a good sport is, pleasant if you're winning, pleasant if you're losing. Just generally all the things that it is to be a Christian in a competitive way. So, if someone wins, rejoice in their winning. That's somewhere in the Bible. And if you lose, or if someone else loses, you got to just be everything that we know to be as Christians just loving, compassionate, all that as part of competition.

Jo 6:38
You'll never guess what? Dave The dog has his own show, and it's called Dave unleashed?

Steven 6:45
Are we sure about this?

Jo 6:46
Well, I'm gonna be there on hand. I'm going to help him.

Steven 6:51
What, what mayhem are we to expect?

Jo 6:54
Well, to keep him on track, he's got story time. He's got art time. So you know, and I'll be there to help him.

Steven 7:02
What could possibly go wrong?

Nathan 7:16
So very good talk, Steven, as usual.

Steven 7:18
Thank you.

Nathan 7:20
I think we all learnt something more about how to have a godly competition and where we find competition in various aspects of our lives. Alright, so these questions, I shalln't bother to ask you if you're ready, because the whole point is that you're not. Okay. Firstly, I gather competition usually makes us perform better, whether that be in exercise, business or other areas. Is that right?

Steven 7:47
Yeah. When you're striving to outdo a certain standard, whether it's your own, or someone else's, then yeah, you're going to do better. Yeah.

Nathan 7:57
So that competition is good, because it pushes us to do better than we've done before.

Steven 8:03
Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan 8:04
Whether that be beating our own records or beating somebody else.

Steven 8:07
Yeah, definitely. So therefore, competition is useful for something.

Nathan 8:11
Yes. So I suppose good, godly competition must be accompanied by humility and gentleness.

Steven 8:21
Yes, being a good sport is about being gentle, about being, what was the other one you said?

Nathan 8:26
Humble.

Steven 8:27
Humble. Yeah, you need to be humble. If you win, or if you lose, you need to be humble. And that is part of healthy competition.

Nathan 8:32
Yeah, we can't always win, we can't always succeed and do better than everybody else. And we shouldn't rely upon the ability to beat others to be satisfied or to be secure in our identity. But that's getting a bit too deep there. Anyway. So by the way, I meant to mention, are you sure you beat me on that time that you mentioned?

Steven 8:54
Yes. I'm positive I beat you. I worked very hard to it as well.

Nathan 8:59
Well there you are. He had to work very hard.

Steven 9:03
Not that hard. It wasn't like my fastest time. I was just having a slow few weeks. And you were going out for a five kilometre run.

Nathan 9:09
Yeah, yeah, He's just trying to,

Steven 9:11
It wasn't my fastest time I did, my fastest time is way faster than yours. Let's not forget.

Nathan 9:17
Okay. Okay. Yeah. It's a good point. That's true. But there are plenty of other areas where, where I beat you.

Steven 9:26
List.

Nathan 9:30
I always beat you on, on the video games.

Steven 9:32
Okay, I think we should move on.

Nathan 9:34
Yeah.

Steven 9:35
Oh, yeah, you do that bit.

Nathan 9:36
Yeah, so in conclusion. Competition is good as you can see, competition helps us do better. But it can be used for bad things. It can be used, if we're not, if we don't, if we're not humble and gentle in our competitive nature, then we can, we can cause issues. But good competition helps us to do better and to work harder for ourselves, for God in our service to others.

Steven 10:02
But we should be wary of comparison.

Nathan 10:04
Yes, comparison is not good. We shouldn't show favouritism or think of somebody better than us. If they can do some, if they can run faster or if they can, if they can, if they have a degree in something,

Steven 10:16
or if they can win at video games,

Steven 10:18
Exactly.

Jo 10:34
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Steven 10:47
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Andy 11:17
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