Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everyone, and 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 Weihrauch, and in today's episode, we're asking the question, who did you write off? Now, this is prompted by an article I read recently in the Washington Post, but really it's prompted by a game that happened recently between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Michigan Wolverines. Now, if you live in Northeast Ohio, you know about this game. It's called the Game for a reason. It's the greatest rivalry in all of sport, and it's a game that Ohio State Buckeyes won handily, 27 to 9 over their hated rivals in Michigan. Now, I didn't need the article for this because I'm a huge Ohio State fan, but. But what the article does, and if you're not a sports fan, this'll be the part that's interesting to you is it introduces the backstory behind this game. Ryan Day is the head coach of the Ohio State football team. And by any measure, really, he's been wildly successful. His win loss record is incredible. He wins, big games, and he even last year won the national championship. The one thing that he really hadn't done is been successful against Michigan. He came into this game with, with a losing record, having lost the last four games to Michigan. Now, this rivalry is so important that a lot of Ohio State fans feel like if you don't beat Michigan, eventually you get fired for that, no matter what else you've done. A lot of Buckeye fans were ready last year to get rid of Ryan Day. and, you know, I was one of them at times. I mean, if I'm honest. I mean, I really don't like Michigan. You know, I grew up in a family with a lot of family members from Michigan. And in my childhood, Michigan won this rivalry game a lot. And so I'm one of those fans where, like, you gotta win this game. I don't want the texts, I don't want the calls, I don't want the emails. We gotta win this one. And when we lost last year, I was pretty frustrated. But I've learned my lesson, because had Ohio State fired Ryan Day after they lost to Michigan, not only would they have been wrong, but they would have stopped themselves from becoming really the premier football program in all of college football. They won the championship last year. They also haven't lost since then. They're headed now into the Big Ten championship game and into the College Football Playoff. The Prohibitive favorite. Every other program in college football wants to be Ohio State. And I think there's a lesson here. And that lesson is we gotta slow down in how quick we are to move off of other people, to give up on other people, not just in the sports world, but in the world in general. James 1:19 says it this way. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. I can't think of a verse that is more antithetical to our culture than that one. Because we're in a culture where we don't listen. We're quick to speak and we're quick to anger. We're quick to want to fire, we're quick to want to cancel, we're quick to want to move on. But the Ryan Day story is an instructive one because it makes me wonder, who have we canceled? Who have we fired? Who have we gotten rid of, either on a cultural level or even on a personal level? Who am I not talking to anymore that would have brought incredible value to my life? Who would have taken our culture, our country, to another level? Listen, when you read any biography, what you're going to find is there are great moments and bad ones. There are ups and downs, twists and turns. Most people who have made a huge impact on the world had, chapters of their life where they are not proud of and it looked like they would amount to nothing and. But because they were given a second chance, because people stuck with them, the world changed. By the way, that's in the Bible. Think about the apostle Peter, who denied Jesus in a crucial moment, who it made sense to be canceled. In fact, Peter thought he would be canceled even when he knew Jesus had risen from the dead. But if Jesus had canceled Peter, we wouldn't have the Book of Acts. We wouldn't have the church that we have today. David, Solomon, Moses, Abraham, the list goes on. I'm not talking about a culture free of accountability or there not being consequences for moral actions. But what I am saying is that my heart needs a change. I need a category for accountability, but I also need a category for redemption. Accountability that is bigger than my redemptive belief is an accountability I can't square with the Bible. I'm glad Ohio State didn't listen to idiot fans like me and move on from Ryan Day because we are living our best life now. But I'm also gonna try to learn from this, and I hope you will too. People are complicated, stories are long, and a chapter doesn't mean the story can't be incredible. Maybe. Maybe after you listen to this episode, you need to send a text, make a call, write an email, and reconnect with someone that you've written. Because who knows, your best chapter might be waiting for you on the other side of that call. Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. And while you're here, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get further content or even download the CCC app, where you'll find even more resources to help you grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.

Have an article you’d like Zach to discuss? Email us at wakeup@ccchapel.com!