Webster’s dictionary defines victory as “the winning of a battle, war, or any struggle.” The definition of winning is “to finish first.” Is it possible to gain a great victory and still not finish first? Which is more important: victories or wins?

Integrity isn’t just something you display when you’re out in public or on the job. It also carries over to your family, to your kids, to your neighbors, to everybody who comes into contact with you. Am I saying things to my family like, “This is what I want you to do,” but I don’t necessarily do them? Am I saying, “This is what we’re going to be all about as a family,” but maybe next week it won’t be? I think that’s very confusing and it’s important to let my family know here are our standards, the Lord’s standards. This is what we’re going to try to live up to. Sure we’re going to fail at times and we’re going to fall short, but this is what we need to be about.

Have you ever wondered why we are so competitive as athletes and coaches? Why when we get onto the playing field we take on a whole new persona? The competitive nature to win comes out in us all. We sacrifice for the team! We lay down that bunt or make the block so that the rest of the team can rejoice in the victory.

Our flesh is competitive, but so is our Spirit. In Galatians 5, Paul talks about this very thing. Our flesh and our Spirit are at war with each other. The things of God are always and will always be completely different from the things of the flesh.

Every morning at the FCA National Support Center in Kansas City, we circle up in our Hall of Champions for a time of prayer at 8:30 a.m. We come together to pray over our FCA staff, athletes and coaches across the country; about events in the ministry; about things going on in the world; about personal requests—just whatever needs to be prayed for that day. During our time, we also read a Psalm of the week. What better way to kick off a time of prayer than by reading such real and authentic passages, many of which display raw emotions of every kind?

I’ll never forget the first day of football camp at the small college I attended. I’d come hoping to be a part of a winning program and perhaps even a national championship. Our head coach had scheduled a team meeting. As he reviewed the goals, he pulled out the video of last year’s national championship—a game we had lost. I then expected him to share his plan on how we would make it back to the national championship game and win.

Instead, he did something I would never forget: he threw the video to the ground, stomped it to bits, and told us if our only dream was to win a national championship, then we had set our goals too low!

As athletes, a majority of us are constantly searching for two things when it comes to increasing our athletic performance:

1. Things that make us better.
2. Things that make us worse.

Athletes who are serious about reaching their full potential are always looking for that next exercise, diet or drill that will help them increase their performance. Similarly, athletes are also on the lookout for things that will inhibit or corrupt their performance (bad habits, poor attitudes, wrong diets, etc.) so that they might be able make changes and achieve their full athletic potential.