Weekly Content for P.A.C.K. Meetings
P – PRAYER
Pray for your time together. Ask God to give you open hearts, open ears, and a willingness to be open and honest with each other.
Wrap up your time together by having guys share any additional personal prayer requests and pray specifically for one another.
You can also pray this prayer as a follow-up to the topic:
Heavenly Father, please help me not be consumed by the wrong crowd or the world that comes at me on all sides. Help me to stand my ground and follow You out of situations that are meant to hurt me. Thank you for calling me out of this world and allowing me to be included in Your Kingdom. In Jesus’ name, I pray, Amen.
A – ACCOUNTABILITY
Ask guys how their week was. Follow up on last week’s topic about “being an ambassador for Jesus” and ask them if they had any additional thoughts about representing Him in all we do.
Also, it can be an opportunity for guys to share any struggles or challenges from the week that they need to confess or be held accountable for.
If married, ask how everyone is intentionally serving their spouse…and if a parent, what the biggest challenge is right now.
C – CONVERSATION
Talk about weekly content that connects sports to life and faith.
UNPACKIN’ it Devotional Content:
Stuck in the Crowd
March Madness will be here soon, but upsets and buzzer-beaters are already taking place in college basketball.
On Saturday, Wake Forest hosted number 8-ranked Duke in front of a sold-out crowd (their first since 2017 and almost 15,000 fans!), with the team pulling off an 83-79 upset.
As the final seconds ticked off the clock, the Wake fans excitedly stormed the court, sprinting to celebrate the victory. This is always a wild scene, but one that is memorable and special for college students to experience.
Unfortunately, during all of the fun, Duke’s star player, Kyle Filipowski was still on the court and got stuck in the crowd. While trying to escape, he got tripped up and injured his knee and had to be carried off the floor by his teammates and coaches.
Following the ugly scene, there was a lot of discussion about whether storming the court should even be allowed. We will discuss that topic on tomorrow’s podcast, so make sure that you subscribe and listen HERE.
For today’s devotional, I want to focus on some observations I made after watching the replay multiple times.
The crowd was celebrating all around Filipowski and because most Wake fans likely hate Duke players, they weren’t worried about him getting hurt or being taken down. This led to Filipowski being tossed around and consumed by the chaos of the crowd.
In retrospect, Filipowski wasn’t prepared to get out of the crowd and didn’t move quickly enough to avoid getting swallowed up in the sea of people. He needed to anticipate what was about to happen as the game ended and find a way out, but sadly, it was too late as the crowd hit him on every side.
With lessons learned, we’ll see if changes to storming the court will be implemented across college basketball any time soon.
As I consider this unfortunate scene of Filipowski being stuck in the crowd and getting hurt by it, there’s a parallel for followers of Jesus in that we aren’t meant to remain in the crowd. When we do, we can easily get hurt and taken down by the crowd (or the world) who hates us and wants to swallow us up and toss us around.
Jesus explains in John 15:18-19 (NLT), “If the world hates you, remember that it hated Me first. The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you.”
When we follow Jesus, He doesn’t want us to be caught up in the world anymore and stuck in the crowd. When we anticipate being in a bad situation we must look for the way out by acting quickly and not lingering in the middle of the crowd that’s celebrating evil all around us.
Proverbs 4:25-27 (NLT) says, “Look straight ahead and fix your eyes on what lies before you. Mark out a straight path for your feet; stay on the safe path. Don’t get sidetracked; keep your feet from following evil.”
Today, if we’ve been staying in the crowd or delaying our escape, let’s ask Jesus, along with “teammates,” to help carry us out before getting even more hurt.
Just like a Duke player has no business being in the middle of the Wake Forest crowd getting tied up with them, as followers of Jesus we have no business being in the middle of the wrong crowd, getting tied up with them.
Instead, let’s choose to follow Jesus and leave the chaos of the crowd behind!
I’m Bryce Johnson, and you can UNPACK that!
Further Scripture Reading:
Proverbs 27:12 (AMP): “A prudent man sees evil and hides himself and avoids it, But the naive [who are easily misled] continue on and are punished [by suffering the consequences of sin].”
Romans 12:2 (AMP): “And do not be conformed to this world [any longer with its superficial values and customs], but be [a]transformed and progressively changed [as you mature spiritually] by the renewing of your mind [focusing on godly values and ethical attitudes], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His plan and purpose for you].”
1 Corinthians 10:13 (ESV): “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”
2 Timothy 2:22 (AMP): “Run away from youthful lusts—pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace with those [believers] who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”
Psalm 32:7 (AMP): “You are my hiding place; You, Lord, protect me from trouble; You surround me with songs and shouts of deliverance.”
Additional Thoughts to Consider or Emphasize or Other Directions to Go:
- The importance of helping our friends out of the wrong crowd and helping to carry them when they’ve been hurt.
- We must minister and witness to “the crowd” when given the opportunity, but we don’t want to be part of the wrong crowd.
- How do we stand our ground and stand out in the crowd?
- How do we respond when we feel alone in a crowd?
- Kids are affected by what crowd they are in, but isn’t it true for adults too?
- How Jesus interacted with crowds and what he said to the crowd.
Podcast-Listen/Watch:
Questions to Discuss:
- Have you ever stormed the court?
- Who was more at fault for what happened: Kyle Filipowski, Coach Scheyer, the fans, or Wake Forest security/administration?
- In your own life, how have you been consumed by the crowd or the world?
- How important is anticipation to getting out of bad situations?
- How have you experienced being hated because of your faith in Jesus?
- What does it mean to come out of the world and not be a part of the crowd?
- In what ways does the crowd attempt to keep you stuck in it?
- In what ways do you try and fit into the crowd?
- In what ways has following Jesus taken you away from the crowd?
- How do you relate to the teammates who carried the hurt Filipowski out of the crowd?
K – KICKING Around Interesting and Relevant Sports Stories and Topics (You Can Start With This)
Go around the room as each guy shares a thought, a hot take, an observation about their favorite team, or a big story that is going on. Save the conversation about the sports topic from the devotional for later.
THIS WEEK’S HEADLINES:
- What NFL combine storylines are most interesting to you?
- The Clippers are doing a rebrand for their jerseys and logo. What other team needs to do that?
- Should court-storming be banned?
- When should fans storm the court? What kind of wins should they be?
- How would you make storming the court safer?
