Headlines That Won’t Stress You Out
Most high school basketball teams have at least a few people cheering for them.
Parents. Friends. Classmates.
Someone in the stands wearing school colors and yelling encouragement.
But the Gainesville Tornadoes are not most teams.
The Gainesville basketball team plays out of a juvenile correctional facility in Texas. The players are young men who have made mistakes, committed offenses, and are serving time as they try to rebuild their lives.
When they play road games, they usually play in front of empty stands—or at least stands filled entirely with fans cheering for the other team. As one player put it, their fan base was usually close to zero.
Recently, before a game against Vanguard College Prep, two Vanguard players decided something wasn’t right.
Hudson Bradley and Ben Martinson couldn’t shake the feeling that it seemed unfair for one team to have all the support while the other had none. So they came up with an unusual plan.
Before the game, they encouraged members of their own crowd to cheer for Gainesville instead. And they did.
When the Gainesville players walked into the gym, they found signs made for them, people cheering for them, and a fan section that belonged to them.
As the game continued, more and more people joined in.
Every basket was celebrated. Every good play was applauded.
For perhaps the first time in a long time, these young men experienced what it felt like to have a crowd in their corner.
One of the Vanguard players later reflected, “We all need someone to believe in us. We all need someone who knows our mistakes and loves us anyway.”
What a beautiful reminder.
This week in worship, we reflected on Zacchaeus—the man everyone else had already labeled and written off. The crowd saw a sinner. Jesus saw a son. The crowd saw a problem. Jesus saw a possibility.
In a small but meaningful way, those students in Texas chose to do the same thing.
They looked beyond labels. They looked beyond past mistakes. They chose to see people who desperately needed encouragement and support. And perhaps that’s why this story resonates so deeply.
Because all of us know what it feels like to need someone in our corner. All of us know what it feels like to hope that we are more than our worst decisions. And all of us have opportunities every day to do what those students did—to notice someone others overlook, to encourage someone others ignore, and to make the first move toward kindness.
The final score of the game has long been forgotten. But the gift those students gave will be remembered for years. After all, that’s how grace often works.
Someone chooses to see you. Someone chooses to believe in you. Someone chooses to cheer for you. And everything changes.
Now that’s a victory worth celebrating.
Loving people sounds beautiful—until it becomes difficult.
This Sunday, we’ll explore Jesus’ challenging words in Matthew 16:24-26, where He tells His disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
Throughout this series, we’ve been discovering that love goes first. But this week we’ll wrestle with an important truth: going first in love always comes at a cost.
It’s one thing to love people who think like us, agree with us, and appreciate us. It’s another thing entirely to love those who frustrate us, challenge us, disagree with us, or even oppose us. Yet this is precisely the kind of love Jesus demonstrated throughout His life and ministry.
The good news is that Jesus never asks us to make a sacrifice He has not already made Himself. The One who calls us to take up our cross first carried His own. The One who calls us to love sacrificially first loved us sacrificially.
Join us this Sunday as we discover what it means to follow Jesus when love requires courage, surrender, and self-denial—and how God’s grace gives us the strength to do what we could never do on our own.
We’ll lift our voices in worship through two powerful hymns of discipleship and commitment:
I Have Decided to Follow Jesus
Join us this Sunday as we gather to worship the One who loved us first, gave everything for us, and calls us to follow Him wherever He leads.
Be sure to click the links below to listen and sing along as you prepare your heart for worship this Sunday. We look forward to worshiping with you this Sunday!
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