Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everyone. Thanks for listening to Wake Up Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weirock. And in today's episode, we're talking about an NBA coach who was fired, and we're asking the question, why isn't good enough? Now this is prompted by an article I read in the Washington Post by Max Boot, but it's really prompted by the recent firing of the New York Knicks of their head coach, Tom Thibodeaux.

Thibodeaux has been a smashing success as the coach of the New York Knicks, a franchise that has had its down moments. For example, he has led the Knicks to the eastern conference finals just this season for the time in twenty five years. He's been the head coach for five seasons, four of which he took them to the playoffs, including the last two seasons where he consecutively won over 50 games, something the Knicks hadn't done since the nineteen nineties. In other words, not only has he been good, the Knicks haven't been this good in a long time. In fact, recently, in the playoffs, they defeated the Boston Celtics who were the defending champ, and yet the Knicks still think, we can do better.

Now that's interesting to me because it's part of a trend in the NBA. In fact, every coach of the year this is staggering. Listen to this. Every coach of the year in the NBA, the award given to the coach who did the best job that season from 2018 to 02/2023. So so the last five or six years has been fired by the team they were the coach of when they won that award.

Every single one of them. Think about that. Every one of them having been seen in a particular season as being the best at what they do in the world, eventually found their employer saying, it's not good enough. And every time what these franchises are saying is like, hey. Look.

We appreciate what that coach did, but we wanna be even better. That was good. It just wasn't good enough. Now that's an interesting thing for a franchise to say, and I might feel that more poignantly because I'm a Cleveland sports fan, and I would love for the Browns to have just a little bit of that success. But I also think it's interesting for a spiritual reason.

Believe it or not, this is a spiritual thing that is pervasive in our culture because good is not enough when you're restless. When you're consistently looking for something better because you think maybe that will make you happy. The truth is in our culture, we idolize greatness because we think if we could ever have greatness, then maybe we would be complete. Jesus warns us about this. In Matthew chapter six, when he tells us where your treasure is, there will be your heart also, he tells us this life is by its very nature temporary.

So what we're chasing, a life of significance in this world fundamentally doesn't exist. The life of significance that we're longing for is in the next world, the one where we'll be with God forever. And so Jesus says true greatness isn't always trying to level up here on earth. It is understanding that through the blood of Jesus, you are going to be leveled up in the new heavens and new earth. Faithfulness is what the Bible calls us to.

Faithfulness is the true definition of success. What Jesus tells us in Matthew 25 in the passage about the sheep and the goats that what we're longing to hear is a God who says, well done, good and faithful servant. I'm so glad he doesn't say, well done, champion, because most of us won't achieve that. But faithfulness, day in and day out, doing the work that God has put in front of us, the work he knows we can do is actually an obtainable goal in this life. Look.

A graceless culture, a culture that has no gratitude and appreciation for what is done is a culture that is toxic ultimately for relationships. Paul says it this way in Romans 15, accept one another just as Christ has accepted you, and he didn't do that on the basis of performance. Praise god for that. The Knicks don't think Thibodeaux is good enough, and that's because deep down in the human heart, none of us think we're good enough. We're looking for the next success, the next achievement, the next trophy that will somehow make us feel good.

The Bible says, what if you just acknowledge you're not good, but you don't have to be because God's love is about who he is and not fundamentally about who you are? Impatience in faithfulness, chasing the high of so called greatness is something the Bible warns us about implicitly in the fruit of the spirit in Galatians five because the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance. A kind of steadiness that comes from knowing that faithfulness is the goal, not necessarily maximum achievement. Look, what I'm saying is the Knicks are firing Thibodeaux for the same reason you and I spend money or cut corners or chase the things we chase. We're longing for someone to say, you did good.

But God gives us something better. I love you because my son who died for you is good. That means not only do I have love, it's love I can't weaken. It's love I didn't achieve. Restlessness isn't about pursuing a trophy.

Restlessness is about ultimately finding rest in Jesus Christ. It's something, the Knicks don't understand. It's something I don't understand either. But when you and I find rest in Christ, that is when good really will be enough. This episode of Wake Up Look Up was produced by Holly Andrews and Marcus Cunningham.

Our topic researcher is Shanna Young. This episode was directed by Andy Hoffman. Our podcast coordinator is Hallie Andrews, our production manager, and audio wizard is Marcus Cunningham, with tech and engineering support from Matthew Adel and Landon Holm. I'm your host, Zach Wyrach. Join us for the next episode of Wake Up, Look Up.