Linvoy Primus – A footballer and a Christian!

I have a new found respect for Portsmouth and Linvoy Primus! Read this article from Christianity Magazine UK.

Pre-match prayer meetings, Alpha and community projects are transforming Portsmouth FC. Premiership soccer star Linvoy Primus tells Emma John how faith, football and fame mix.

There’s something strange happening at Portsmouth Football Club, and it’s so extraordinary that everyone in the Premiership – players, fans, managers – knows about it. Pub conversation about Pompey usually revolves around manager Harry Redknapp’s latest signing. Now there’s a new topic, and it’s prayer.

A few months ago, a couple of Christians in the Portsmouth team decided to pray together before each game, huddled in the club’s laundry room. Their numbers grew, and now the Laundry Room Prayer Huddle is general knowledge across the country. It has been mentioned in match reports in almost every single national newspaper. And it hasn’t hurt that in that time, Portsmouth’s performances have lifted them into the top half of the Premiership. Of course, says Portsmouth defender Linvoy Primus, they don’t pray for a victory. “It would be nice if we could pray for a win and God guaranteed it but that’s not the way it works,” he smiles. “We just want to give back to Him the ability he’s given us and ask that He’ll use it to glorify him.”

Sporting glory has become one of the most valuable commodities on the planet. Billion-dollar businesses are sustained by the never-ending global demand for sporting competition. The media obsesses over one man’s ability to kick a football through a pair of posts, or one woman’s ability to hit a tennis ball past her opponent. We make sportsmen and women the darlings of our aspirational culture, feting them with money and fame until their skills themselves become irrelevant, subsumed by their sponsorship deals and their celebrity. In such a world, where do Christians fit?

Soccer saint
Linvoy Primus was 26 when he was bought by Portsmouth, then struggling to stay in the second tier of English football, for a quarter of a million pounds. Primus had spent the previous eight years playing in the lower leagues for Charlton, Barnet and Reading. Both his footballing career and his personal life were unfulfilled. Married, but with problems at home, Primus and his wife were struggling to find genuine friends. Being a footballer, it seemed, made people keen for a piece of him and he didn’t know who he could trust. “In my head, in my heart, there was turmoil,” says Primus. “People said I had it together – I had a lovely wife, two children. I’d think, ‘Yeah, it looks good from the outside but you don’t know what’s going on inside.’ I worried about what was going to happen at the end of my playing contract; that stopped me enjoying the football. I wanted to play well in every game, but I was being lied to by the enemy who told me I was never good enough.”

A couple of his wife’s friends invited Primus and the family to a local service and introduced them to the church. And when Primus decided to commit to Jesus, it didn’t go down well at work. “When I’d first come to the club I wasn’t a Christian, so all the guys knew about me, they knew the way I was. When I first told them I’d found God I got a lot of stick and grief over it. “There was one other Christian player – Darren Moore – and they assumed he had a lot to do with it. Actually, he hadn’t at all.”

The first few months were the hardest. “I had believed up until that point that I wasn’t a bad person. So when I explained to the guys about Jesus, they knew what was going on in my family life, about our problems. And no, I didn’t change dramatically, but I knew something had changed in my heart.” Six months later the situation began to ease and gradually his teammates started turning to him. “Guys started asking for prayer – they wouldn’t ask outright, only on the quiet, for members of their family,” he remembers.

With former player Mick Mellows, Primus prayed for more Christians to come to the club and over the next three years the pair began to see God answering their prayers. Their core of Christian players and staff grew to 13 – they were even able to run an Alpha course. Primus had become a vital member of the side, helping Pompey to win promotion to the Premiership in 2003. By then he was a favourite with the fans who voted him their player of the year. He also scooped the Professional Football Association’s divisional player of the year award – a major honour.

“In general our faith has become respected; no one frowns on us or laughs at us, or considers us a cult. There’s been a really obvious spiritual turnaround at the club. It’s amazing to think that a year ago we wouldn’t have even thought about having prayer before a game.” Primus was careful to respect the manager’s authority, and make sure the timing would not interfere with team preparation. “Now others have joined us, like the kit man and the masseur. Even some of the non- Christian players come in to pray.”

Playing hard on the field has long been linked to playing hard off the field. After all, sport is traditionally a social activity; and it’s not that long since even the nation’s greatest sportsmen could be found doing their pre-match training in the local pub with a fag in hand. Professional sportsmen today are, of course, far more aware of the importance of healthy living. They’re also far better paid than their predecessors, and hedonism and materialism are two very real temptations.
By Emma John.

I thank God for this man who has been a light to his fellow team mates in Portsmouth and to make you known! Should i support Portsmouth now? hick hick.

Wise Words from Bill Piper – John Piper’s father

I love this article, which Pastor John Piper wrote when he found a note while packing his dad who passed away on the 6th March. It is what i seek to live up to in life, and may i not lose focus on the finishing line and on God.

1. The right road always leads to the right place; therefore, get on the right road and go as far as you can on it.

My father was totally persuaded that wrong means do not lead to right ends. Or, more positively, he was persuaded that living in the right way—that is, doing the right things—are means that inevitably lead to where God wants us to be. This is why he told me, when I asked about God’s leading in my life, “Son, keep the room clean where you are, and in God’s time, the door to the next room will open.”

2. There is only one thing to do about anything; that is the right thing. Do right.

This is what one might say to a person perplexed by a difficult situation whose outcome is unknown. The person might say, “I just don’t know what to do about this.” It is not useless to be told: Do the right thing. That may not tell you exactly which good thing to do, but it does clear the air and rule out a few dozen bad ideas.

3. Happiness is not found by looking for it. You stumble over happiness on the road to duty.

My, my, my. How was John Piper born from this? I would never say this. The main reason is that the Bible commands us to pursue our joy repeatedly. “Rejoice in the Lord, and again I say rejoice.” “Delight yourself in the Lord.” I think what he meant was: 1) Joy is always in something. Joy itself is not the something. So we seek joy in Christ. Not just joy in general. 2) When duty is hard and we do not feel joy in doing it, we should still do it, and pray that in the doing it the joy would be given. But what we need to make plain is that duty cannot be contrasted with joy, because joy is a biblical duty.

4. The door to success swings on the hinges of opposition.

Remarkably, this saying implies that opposition is not just a natural accompaniment or antecedent of success, but that it is a means by which the door opens. One can think of many biblical examples. The opposition of Joseph’s brothers opened the door to his leadership in Egypt. The taxing of the empire opened the door to getting the Messiah born in Bethlehem, not Nazareth, and thus fulfilling prophecy. The betrayal of Judas opened the door to the salvation of the world.

5. God in the right place in my life fixes every other relationship of life (Matthew 6:33).

I wonder if this was tucked away in my mind so that unknown to me it controlled my analogy of the solar system to our many-faceted lives. If God is the blazing center of the solar system of our lives, then all the planets will be held in their proper orbit. But if not, everything goes awry.

6. It is never right to get the right thing in the wrong way—like good grades, wealth, power, position. Don’t sacrifice your principles.

Again, he hammers away at don’t use bad means for good ends. Be a principled, not a pragmatic, person. O how we need to hear this today. Churches need to be principled, not endlessly adapting to culture. Persons need to make a promise and keep it no matter how much it hurts.

7. It is a sin to do less than your best. It is wrong to do [merely] well.

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10 ). But be careful. Sometimes the “best” is a B+ sermon and spending time with your child. In other words, “best” always involves more decisions than the one you are making at the moment. That one means many other things are being left undone. So “best” is always the whole thing, not just the detail of the moment.

8. It is wrong to be yoked to one who refuses the yoke of Christ.

Don’t marry an unbeliever (1 Corinthians 7:39). Not all relationships with unbelievers are ruled out. Otherwise we could not obey Jesus’ command to love them and bless them. But “yoke” implies a connectedness that either governs where we go or constrains where they go. And you cannot constrain faith in Jesus. It is free.

9. The part of your character that is deficient is the part that needs attention.

This is the counterpoint to the advice: Go with your strengths. There is truth in both. Yes, be encouraged by every evidence of God’s grace in your life, and use your gifts and graces for his glory. But you will become smug and vain if you do not keep your deficiencies before you and work on them.

10. Don’t quit. Finish the job. God can’t use a quitter.

Warning: “He who endures to the end will be saved” (Mark 13:13). Promise: “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).

11. Anything you do that hinders your progress for God is wrong.

O how thankful I am that this was the dominant way my father pressed me to pursue my sanctification. He did not mainly impose lists of don’ts on me, though we had them. And they were clear. Mainly he said: Maximize your progress in knowing and serving God. That ruled out a hundred foolish behaviors, some bad and some uselessly innocent.

12. Beware of any society in which you feel compelled to put a bushel over your testimony.

This implies that you can go into a group of people who are evil if you are willing to open your mouth and take a stand for Jesus and righteousness. Nevertheless, 1 Corinthians 15:33 stands: “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company ruins good morals.’”

13. It isn’t enough to be good. Be good for something. The essence of Christianity is not a passionless purity.

This is what I have meant in talking about a merely avoidance ethic. Don’t just think of righteousness or holiness in terms of what you avoid, but what you do. As my father said in another place: Don’t be a don’ter; be a doer.

14. Positive living produces negative effect[s].

This is wise counsel that affirmation of the good always implies negation of the bad. If you think you can live your life without negating anything, you have lost touch with reality. “Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good” (Romans 12:9). You cannot love without hating what hurts the beloved.

15. Learn to be sweetly firm.

This was what he said to my mother over the phone when she was exasperated with her one disobedient son: Be sweet and firm. I think she succeeded.

Taken from Desiring God Newsletter @ Desiringgod.org.

It is so hard to live right, where sometimes i feel the heat, and the feet dragged as if they were made of pure lead, and every steps an colossal effort, carrying the weight of the world responsibilities, fighting against the evil within, desperately searching for a trace of faith which i can cling on to, hoping Jesus was there because in His presence, there is a gentleness that soothes like a healing balm, a refreshing scent of the roses, and all that wearies, wearies no more. God help me to apply late pastor Bill’s wisdom and live with one single desire – to love you with all my heart, soul and mind, and stand for what’s right. Take one thing at a time, work, finances, etc, one thing at a time with God.