The Muslim Fad

Title: The Muslim Fad

After facing some aggression from Thessalonica, Paul and Silas moved on
to Berea to preach the Gospel of Christ; this is what was said of the
people of Berea: "These were more fair-minded than those in
Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and
searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.
Therefore, many of them believed..."--Acts 17:11-12a

I am basing tonight's pre-game devotion on that passage. Since my
return, I have learned (and observed) that being a Muslim is a "fad" on
the rise. I say fad, because many of the young men here do not seem to
adhere to the Muslim principles, and for some it seems more of a fashion
statement (many of them wear white caps with a white blouse-like shirt;
sometimes even white pants). It just seems to be "the thing to do,"
which obviously saddens me. We do have some Muslims who play in the
league, and though almost all participate in the prayer and devotion,
there are one or two who refuse. In my quiet time, I read this passage
and I thought "how true for the guys here (and not only here, but
everywhere)." After our All-Star events (which was awesome as always),
we passed out church fliers and bibles; one of them refused, saying "I
don't believe in your Bible or your God." At least this guy had an
opinion; many don't seem to have one at all. I hope to stress that they
must discover truth for themselves. Just as the people did in Berea
(searched the Scriptures to see if these things were true). It's a
shame that we are having to fight a trend to win souls to Christ (and
maybe even a bigger shame when being Christian is the "trend" as opposed
to a true conversion to follow hard after Jesus). Nonetheless, I do have
one exciting story to share:

You may remember a blog last year when I explained how a player from the
league left Open Gym (we will call him P) and returned with a suicidal
girl (who is still doing fine; Mary talked to her on the phone this
week). This girl had driven 45 minutes to the K&A area to pay someone
$3,000 to take somewhere to be killed. P was the first person she
asked. Instead of taking the money, )P brought her to me, and she was
lead to Christ. Earlier this week, P shows up at the Salvation Army,
banging on the door looking for me. He had been crying and kept saying
"I need to talk to you in private, it's urgent, it's urgent; pray for
me, etc."--this kept going on till I could calm him. We found a room and
started talking. He tells me that ever since that night he brought
Katie to me, he had been having suicidal thoughts himself. This had
been going on for a year and he said it came to the point where he could
no longer control it and was losing sleep. Wow... Satan tried to kill
Katie that night, and when P took that away, Satan came after him. We
talked about spiritual warfare and we talked about how it was clear that
God has destined him for greatness (if Katie had met anyone else, they
probably would have taken the money). We talked about the daily
struggles that he will continue to face as he seeks out God. At the end
of our meeting I asked him if he could pray and he said he only knew how
to pray in Spanish! I don't know what he said, but it was emotional...
there is much I could say about our meeting, but what I wanted to get at
was how hungry he was to know God. He was adament about coming to
church... and not only did he come to church yesterday, he brought
family--his wife, daughter, cousin, brother and his brother's
girlfriend. Next week, he is bringing his mom! He got some Spanish
bibles and he's reading the book of John... praise God!

Other than that, the only thing I want to hit on is that next summer I
am going to go "back to my roots." I will put Open Gym on hold, and go
back out to parks with Gatorade--I think God gave me that message this
past week.

Pray for me to have strength this week... all summer we have been having
3 games on Mondays and 3 on Tuesdays. This week we finish the season
with 4 on Monday and Tuesday, then we begin Tournament with 4 games on
Wednesday and Thursday! I'll be exhausted! Here are the teams:
East Division: Diamond St, Wild Cards, North Philly's Finest, Bomb
Squad, Re-Born, Mascher Park, 4th Street, Dynasty
West Division: Da Hogies, Legends, The Future, Battle Ground, The
Savers, Street Sweepers, Next Level, Underdogs
Tonight and tomorrow's games will be intense because only top 6 teams
from each division get into the playoffs, and 4-5 teams in each division
are in the bubble!

Results of All-Star
3-Point: Danny from Dynasty beat Oscar from Re-born in 3 extra rounds
All-Star game: West 110 East 87 (MVP went to Rese from Savers)
Dunk Contest: Black (for 3rd year in a row) from Da Hogies

All this stuff was recorded on film and we plan to put that in our DVD!