SANCTIFICATION, INSTANT

Charlie Waters, former strong safety for the Dallas Cowboys football team, tells a story about Frank Howard, who had been Charlie’s college coach. When Frank Howard was head coach at Clemson University, he went out to practice one Monday before a big game with his first-and third-string quarterbacks out with injuries. That left him with his second-, fourth-, and fifth-string QB’s to play the coming Saturday. In the first five minutes of practice, his starting quarterback (previously second-stringer) hurt his knee. That elevated the fourth-stringer to first-string position and put the fifth-stringer on the second team. About ten minutes later, that replacement QB hurt his knee. Well, the fifth-stringer was now next in line for the first team.

Coach Howard blew the whistle and gathered all the players around him. He took the one remaining QB, put his arm around him, and said in his gruff voice, “Son, do you believe in magic?” The QB said in a halfhearted way, “Well, sort of.” Coach Howard looked at him, pointed his five fingers at him like a magician, and said, “Poof! You are now a first-string quarterback.”

Many people expect the Christian life to work in the same manner—“Poof! All your problems are now solved!”1185