Triumph in Praise

 

Praise 9

 

 

          The summer I turned 12, I discovered sports. We did not own a television, and my father was not a sports fan. It just was not part of my life. But that summer, I decided to take my bike completely apart down to the frame, repaint it bright blue, and put it back together. There was an old radio in the garage. I flipped on the AM one day, heard Herb Score calling a Cleveland Indians game, and was hooked. Sports became a large part of my life for the next thirty years.

          I lived in northeast Ohio just west of the Pennsylvania line. Discovering the Cleveland Indians that summer naturally led to finding the Browns in autumn and the Cavaliers in winter. The only one of the bunch that was any good in the mid-80s was the Browns. With the eerily efficient Bernie Kosar at quarterback, the two thousand-yard rushers Byner and Mack in the backfield, Slaughter at wide receiver, and the Dawg Pound defense, they were as good as anybody in the league. Twice in those years, they battled through to the AFC championship game only to lose each year to John Elway of the Broncos. The Drive and The Fumble. Any real Browns fan still feels the pain four decades later.

          In the 90s, it was the Indians turn to be very, very good. Jacobs Field opened in 1994, and the Indians' offense began to tear the cover off the ball. Albert Belle. Manny Ramirez. The defensive wizard Omar Vizquel at short. Jim Thome swinging a mighty bat from the infield. Wow, what a team. I was in college in those years, and though we did not have televisions in the dorms, I had a radio in my car. And the local hospitals had televisions in their waiting rooms. <grin> Twice in those years, the Indians went to the World Series, only to lose to the NL champion.

          In 2004, I accepted the pastorate of an inner-city Chicago work. The Bears were the best they had been since the Monsters of the Midway in the mid-80s. In 2007, they fought their way to the Super Bowl. It was the first Super Bowl I had ever watched. The Bears were toast before halftime.

          When we moved to Chicago, I told my then two-year-old son there were two baseball teams in town, the Sox and the Cubs. I asked him which one we wanted to cheer for. Cheekily, he looked up at me, grinned, and said, "The 'tubs." Those two words doomed me. I went from cheering for a team that had not won the World Series since 1948 (the Cleveland Indians) to one which had not won the World Series since 1908 (the Chicago Cubs.) Apparently, I could not back a winning sports team to save my life.

          …with one shining exception. And I do mean shining. The 2003 Fiesta Bowl matched the undefeated and defending national champion Miami Hurricanes against a surprising yet underwhelming 13-0 Ohio State Buckeyes team. When I discovered sports on my AM garage radio, I also found the Buckeyes. Many a Saturday afternoon, I tuned in to 570 AM, WKBN, to hear the play-by-play of the Buckeye games. The city closest to McDonald, the little village I grew up in, was Youngstown. The only thing alive in Youngstown was the YSU Penguins. Under their longtime coach, Jim Tressel, a former Buckeyes assistant, he routinely won Division II championships. The entire sporting world was shocked when Ohio State hired the lowly Division II coach, Jim Tressel, away from YSU in 2001, and now I had an even bigger reason to cheer for Ohio State. In 2002, Tressel would recruit an electric tailback from the Youngstown area, Maurice Clarett, who was the USA Today Offensive Player of the Year, and now I had an even bigger reason to cheer for Ohio State.

          As the 2002 college football season progressed, Ohio State kept winning, ugly and close but kept winning. They ended the season in stand-up fashion, beating their hated rivals, the Michigan Wolverines, 14 to 9 on a last-second endzone interception. That sent them off to the Fiesta Bown against a Miami team that had won 34 games in a row. Needless to say, the Buckeyes were two touchdown underdogs.

          Mandy and I spent that Fiesta Bowl day in early 2003 in Pennsylvania with her dad. The national championship game was in the evening, and being on the East Coast, it started late. As the game wore on, a back-and-forth kind of game, the relatives began to leave and go home one by one. I was super-glued to the screen. As of this writing, I am 50, and in all my life, I have never seen a game as good as that game. Great running. Intense defense. Interceptions became strips and recovers by the offense on the same play. In the 4^th quarter, with three seconds left, Miami kicked a 40-yard field goal and tied the game at 17. That took us into overtime. The first overtime ended with the game tied at 24. That took us into double overtime, where, almost five hours after it had started, the Ohio State Buckeyes finally defeated the Miami Hurricanes 31-24 in what many people still consider the greatest college football game ever played.

          Alone (everyone else had gone to bed), I stood up, raised my arms in the classic touchdown pose, and jumped around the living room shouting, "We won! We won!" at the top of my voice—finally, a champion.

          In reality, of course, I had not won anything. I had not made a single block or tackle. I had not strapped on a helmet and shoulder pads and practiced two-a-days in the August heat. I had not hit the line behind a counterplay, run an out route, or thrown a deep ball on the post pattern. No, instead, I had sat on a fluffy couch in a toasty warm living room thousands of miles away, consuming a veritable mountain of chips while watching them do all the work. But watching me dance around the room that night, you would not have known that. I was as thrilled by the championship win as the players were. Champions!

          What does all this have to do with praising God? In the Christian life, God does all of the actual work, but I get to share in the triumph if I cheer Him on.

          We see this quite clearly in Psalm 106. It opens with a straightforward call for us to praise God. Praise ye the Lord. O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. The following verse implies that what we are praising Him for are His works, not our works. Who can utter the mighty acts of the Lord? Who can shew forth all his praise? What follows is a repetition of God's mercy to His people in spite of their numerous sins. The crossing of the Red Sea. Korah's rebellion. Aaron's calf worship. The Baal worship was stopped by Phinehas. The Moloch worship during the era of the judges and the various captivities. Yet each of these produced mercy on the part of God, mercy eminently worth praising Him for, as God delivered His people.

 

43  Many times did he deliver them; but they provoked him with their counsel, and were brought low for their iniquity.

44  Nevertheless he regarded their affliction, when he heard their cry:

45  And he remembered for them his covenant, and repented according to the multitude of his mercies.

46  He made them also to be pitied of all those that carried them captives.

  

          In each of these crises, God had delivered them. In response, His people praised Him. In the psalmist's mind, this meant that God would continue to deliver His people from their current troubles. And they would continue to praise Him as a result.

 

47  Save us, O LORD our God, and gather us from among the heathen, to give thanks unto thy holy name, and to triumph in thy praise.

48  Blessed be the LORD God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting: and let all the people say, Amen. Praise ye the LORD.

 

          Do you see it? Just a couple of lines up? We triumph in His praise. He does the work. We cheer. And when He wins, we raise our hands in victory.

          The unthankful, non-praising Christian is a defeated Christian. This is not because he is unable to accomplish anything good in a spiritual sense, for all of us are in that condition. No, beloved, it is because he does not cheer for God, and thus he has no share in the triumphs that God wins on his behalf. I cannot defeat Satan. I cannot defeat sin. I cannot defeat death and hell. But He did, and I can share in His triumph when I praise Him for it.

          On some yet unknown future day, I will be riding behind Him on a white horse as He returns to this Earth. The remnants of the world's militaries will be gathered together in their folly. The antichrist and the false prophet will direct them to oppose God. He will open His mouth and speak, and the valley of Megiddo will run with blood. His enemies will be slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands. And although I will have done nothing to make it happen, somewhere way back in that line of galloping white, I will shout until my throat is hoarse.

          He will do all the work. But I will triumph in praise.