Even though I’m only 5’6” tall and weigh a buck forty soaking wet, I’m a surprisingly good athlete out on the flag football field. Really, I am; don’t snicker.

A few years ago, I was part of a flag football team known simply as “The Amazing Really Goods”. That’s such a great team name, isn’t it? Our desire was to have a title that would send a message to all those opponents we would face out there…and that message was: we’re amazing and we’re really good.

One year, our season of hard work landed us smack dab in the middle of the championship for the coveted title of “Division 2 Intramural Flag Football Champions of the South East Region”. This was a title that we did not take lightly.

For our final game, we were playing a team called “Ricky Williams’ Secret Stash,” which gave me a pretty good understanding of what these dudes did on a typical Saturday night. Rumor had it that they were pretty tough out on the football field, so I remember being very nervous during pre-game warm-ups. Looking around at my teammates as we stretched, I could see that all of them were feeling exactly the same thing that I was feeling…all of them except for Matt.

Let me tell you a little bit about Matt. See, he was a senior in the Army ROTC program at school and he had just returned home from a 12-month stint in Iraq, literally fighting for our country.

While overseas, Matt carried a weapon and sometimes he even had to use it. He saw explosions, screaming women and children in pain, tanks, humvees, blood and sand. Good friends of his got shot and he was even shot at himself on occasion. In everyone’s eyes, Matt was a hero who had just come back from war. No one debated that.

And now we stood together on a silly intramural flag football field; me feeling nervous and scared while Matt looked as serene as if he were on vacation in the Caribbean.

The game started. We played hard and the outcome was close, but sadly, we ended up losing to the pot-smokers in the end. I remember how frazzled we all were when we were defeated. Some guys left the field without speaking a word and others held their heads low…but again, not Matt.

Matt was lighthearted afterward. He skipped across the field and picked up his bag while throwing an arm around a friend and playfully punching him. I was puzzled at the time and I asked myself, “How can he be so cavalier about the fact that we just lost the biggest game of the season?” I didn’t get it.

Well, it only took me a few days to figure out what was going on in Matt’s mind the night we lost. The answer was simple: to him, it truly was only a game. The Intramural Flag Football Championship was so small in comparison to the things he experienced in the thick of battle only a few months previous. Matt had gone through war, so why get so upset about something that was supposed to be fun competition?

You know, I think a lot about Matt and his experiences when I think about evangelism. In many ways, when we are out there on the front lines of battle for God’s Kingdom sharing our faith, the other annoying little details of life begin to slip into their rightful place behind what’s really important.

When I’m active in reaching out to others with the gospel, suddenly (for example) traffic doesn’t bother me as much as it used to. The small things in life truly become smaller in light of the fact that people die every day without knowing Jesus.

I now understand why Matt was the way he was at the game that night. I only wish that I could continue to have that kind of proper perspective on life when it comes to majoring in the majors and letting the minors be the minors during my years on this planet. Our time here is short and God calls us to live in light of eternity.

Someone very wise once told me that all of life is about perspective. And when I’m sharing my faith on a regular basis, my perspective is vividly accurate because I’m focused on the things that are most important in light of all eternity. I don’t sweat the details and I don’t lose my cool over stuff that, in the grand scheme of things, just doesn’t matter as much. Matt was a great guy that had great perspective that I can continue to learn from.

Now if I could only go back and change the outcome of that flag football game…kidding.