What would happen if your team decided not to listen to you? What happens when a player chooses to run their own plays or ignores the rules of the game? Imagine what happens if your players don’t practice discipline, obedience, and respect for each other and the other team.

Dabo Swinney’s Clemson Tigers demands his players always be on their best behavior. “We try to keep it clean at practice,” states left tackle Jackson Carman. According to Carman, the policy is zero profanity unless it’s in the Bible. The tolerable ways to express disgust, per Swinney, are limited to hell, damn, and ass. “It’s the right thing to do,” Swinney said when asked about the policy.

1 Corinthians 5 – Restorative Discipline

Because of the lack of leadership in the Corinthian church, the church faced many disciplinary problems, including incest, lawsuits, and prostitution. Paul even goes so far as to say the believers were acting worse than the pagans (5:1)!

Paul’s role as a leader meant he couldn’t overlook serious sin among the believers but had to confront it. Matthew 18:15-17 provides guidelines for doing so. There was no room for Paul to back down from confronting the sin. The actions were not to be punitive but restorative. James wrote, “Whoever brings the sinner back from wandering will save that person from death and bring about the forgiveness of many sins” (James 5:20).

To help the man who needed to repent of his sin, Paul encouraged the church to expel him from their fellowship. He used the analogy of yeast in bread to describe the danger of allowing immoral behavior to continue unchecked within the church.

The Kingdom Coach and Athlete take inappropriate behavior on their team seriously and don’t allow it to negatively affect the rest of the team. They seek to restore the athlete, hoping they will turn away from their sin.

Bible Memory Verse – “Or do you not know that your body is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore, glorify God in your body.” 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (LSB)

Click HERE for the Kingdom Sports Minute: Stop Repeating Errors.

Our featured book this week is from The Total Athlete Series, Book 2: Priorities (What Does It Mean To Live With True Priorities?). Written by Ron Brown and Gordon Thiessen

Click HERE to review.

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