Starting Right
Starting Right is a 5 minute Day Starter to help keep you motivated, encouraged, and focused throughout your day. DannyMac is a pastor, teacher, motivational speaker, husband, and father. His years of leading and training people have given him vast experience in helping individuals to accomplish change in their lives and meet their goals. He can help you set the course for your day by offering practical advice from God's Word in a positive and fun way. There is no better way to begin your day than by Starting Right with DannyMac.
Starting Right
Beyond Championships: What Really Matters in Life
What makes a true champion? Beyond the trophies and accolades lies something far more powerful – the ability to transform lives through love, faith, and unwavering principles.
Today we explore the extraordinary legacy of John Wooden, whose name towers above all others in college basketball history. What makes Wooden's story particularly compelling is how he demonstrated truth through actions before speaking it with words. His example challenges us to become people who show God's love in tangible ways that impact those around us.
How might our influence grow if people saw truth lived out in our lives before hearing it from our lips? Join us as we learn from this remarkable coach who understood that championships fade, but transformed lives create legacies that last forever.
Good morning and welcome to Starting Right. I am Danny Mac and I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great start to your day. So grab your cup of coffee, sit back and relax for the next five minutes as I help you start your day by starting right. In the world of college basketball in the United States, there is one coach's name that stands miles above the rest. That fellow is John Wooden. Now, if you've never heard of John Wooden, it's probably because you don't follow basketball, and that's quite all right. But this guy was amazing. From the early 1960s through the mid-1970s, he coached the UCLA Bruins basketball team and during that 12-year period he won 10 national championships, including seven in a row. Nobody else has ever done that for more than four in a row. Also, during that time, they won 88 consecutive basketball games. When he retired from basketball, his record was 664 wins to only 162 losses. That's over an 80% winning percentage.
Speaker 1:And what he was known for as his greatest strength was not basketball. He built up young men and taught them what it meant to be men, and he did this all from a perspective of being a very strong and devout follower of Jesus Christ. He once said. I've always tried to make it clear that basketball is not the ultimate. It is of small importance in comparison to the total life we live. There is only one kind of life that truly wins, and that is the one that places faith in the hands of the Savior, jesus Christ. Coach Wooden was most satisfied by the difference he made in the lives of his players. He taught them strong principles based upon the Word of God that helped them to create successful lives, not only on the basketball court but in life. Many of them went on to become lawyers and doctors, and ministers and teachers.
Speaker 1:John Wooden had a personal seven-point creed that was given to him by his father, and this creed he passed on to his players for them to live by on a daily basis, and he held them accountable to it. The Creed included these seven things Be true to yourself. Make each day your masterpiece. Help others. Drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible. Make friendship a fine art. Build a shelter against a rainy day. Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day. He also developed what he called his Pyramid of Success, which were biblical principles that were built upon each other to help create successful lives for his young men that he was teaching. At one point he wrote a devotional book. It was called Coach Wooden's Pyramid of Success Building Blocks for a Better Life, and he made it very clear that each point that makes up his pyramid of success was based upon God's word. He said I believe in absolute truth and absolute sin, and the Bible is my standard for determining those absolutes.
Speaker 1:Coach Wooden was a very successful man. His life was committed to Jesus Christ, but his ministry was unique. It wasn't one preaching sermons from a pulpit. It wasn't one going on to the mission field in another country. His mission field was to build young men and to help them understand the truth of God and godly principles that would allow them to become successful in life. His favorite verse of scripture comes from 1 Corinthians 13, what we call the love chapter, and John Wooden's favorite verse is the very last verse of that chapter, which says this so now, faith, hope and love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love.
Speaker 1:Coach Wooden was guided by the word of God and by the principle of love.
Speaker 1:He learned what it really meant to love the people around him, to love the young men that he was influencing in life. He not only told them the way to go, he showed them the way to go by, how he lived, and that kind of person we need to see more and more of around us right now. My challenge today, my friends, is that we become people of love like that, that we learn to care so much about people around us that we don't tell them what to do, we don't simply say this is what you need to do and this is what you don't need to do. They know it's true, because they see it first in us, and then they can ask us why, and then we can give them the answer because of the love of God in my life. How well are we showing the love of God to the people around us, those that really need to see it?
Speaker 1:In this time of strife and worry and division, they need to see love. Let us show God's truth and make an impact where we are. Be blessed, my friends. Have a great day. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Have a great day. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Thank you for listening today and I invite you to join me Monday to Friday, right here on, starting Right with Danny Mac.
