He’s Invested Too Much

Last month the Chicago Blackhawks won their sixth Stanley Cup Championship as a professional ice hockey franchise. More impressively, this is their third title in the last six years. Given the team’s recent dominance, it might be tempting to conclude that winning was easy. It certainly was not. The team battled injuries throughout the regular season and entered the playoffs with the third seed in their division. In the conference finals, Chicago trailed in a best-of-seven series, three games to two. At a particularly low point in that series a television interviewer asked Joel Quenneville, the coach of the Blackhawks, whether or not he had considered pulling his starting goalie. Quenneville’s answer got my attention. To the in-game interviewer Quenneville said, “No, not at all.” And then he gave his logic: “We’ve invested too much to do that.” Quenneville was communicating that he stood behind his all-star goaltender, Corey Crawford, and that he was not about to introduce an element of uncertainty or doubt at a point in the season when everything was on line. The coach and the team were “all-in” and Crawford was their guy. Crawford proceeded to play lights out the rest of the way, and Chicago won six of its next eight games to win the Cup.

The moral of the story? Every Christian struggles with doubt at one time or another or in one way or another. We question whether or not we really are the right person to do something. We question whether or not God is really with us. We question whether or not we are going to make it through a difficult situation. We need to remember that if we are in a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, God says of us, “I’ve invested too much in this person to let go of him now.” In effect, this is exactly what God says in Romans 8:32. “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” God has invested this much: He has given His Son for His people. God is “all-in.” In fact, God cannot be any more invested in you than He is. That realization ought to drive out your doubts. The God, who has given His Son for you, is the God who will never leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews 13:5). Your situation is not an accident. Your struggles with holiness are not insurmountable. You have a God who is committed fully and irrevocably to you. Ask Him to help you believe what His Word tells you is true.