God loves the COWBOYS!

"God sees more in us than we can see in us."

Okay, so I was talking with Chris online tonight, just after the Cowboys played an amazing final 2 minutes of their game against the Buffalo Bills. So Chris mentioned the above as a point to use in a song I'm planning on writing to coincide with a sermon he's writing. That's when it popped in my head - God loves the Cowboys! Now, I have a mind that jumps all over the place, and my brother Kyle is usually one of the few people who can follow my train of thought, so I'll try to break down what I'm saying. But first, I must recap the game tonight.

Tony Romo (quarterback for the Cowboys) threw FOUR interceptions in the first half, and another in the second. That, my friends, makes for a not-so-good outlook for my Cowboys going into the last TWO MINUTES of the game at 24-16. This means that in 2 minutes they'd need to get a touchdown and a two-point conversion to tie the game and go into overtime. Well they got the touchdown (24-22), and went for the conversion, but NO! Blocked by the Bills. Bummer, right? NO, this is where it gets good! Okay, so the Cowboys deliver an onside kick, AND RECOVER THE BALL. But they're on the other side of the 50-yard line with 20 seconds to go. Romo passes to around the 40 to T.O., but NO! Incomplete pass! So the time goes down to 13 seconds and it's time to make a play. Short pass, but still outside field goal range. SEVEN SECONDS LEFT - Another quick pass... leaves the kicker with TWO SECONDS to make a 53-yard career-high field goal attempt. This is his first attempt at 50+ yards!! He kicks and... IT'S GOOD! HE MAKES THE FIELD GOAL! but nooooooooo, he can't keep it because the head coach for the Bills (in what has become the new strategy - DIRTY strategy if you ask me) called "time out" right before the snap!!! WHAT!? So Dallas' kicker has to set up to kick ANOTHER career-length field goal. AND IT'S GOOD!!!! COWBOYS WIN!!! 25-24

Okay, so there's the background.

In case you can't already see where I'm going with this - here's a hint: We're the Cowboys. The Bills are Satan.

(Okay, I feel I must interject here momentarily to say that the Bills aren't really Satan... I'm just a Cowboy's fan, and tonights game happens to illustrate a biblical point. Bear with me.)

So the Cowboys TOTALLY should have lost tonight's game. They gave away plays from the get-go, and Romo himself in the post-game interview said he played poorly. But can't we relate to that??? How many times do we make bad decisions? How many times do we give something to Satan, whether we meant to or not? And the Bills tonight really were like Satan if we're using the analogy. Let me tell you why. They were FIERCE. They took advantage of every opportunity. Punt return for touchdown. Two touchdowns off intercepted passes. Just like the Bills, Satan knows how to take advantage of our weaknesses! He jumps in when he sees them, and runs with them. Whether it's fear, anger, addiction... Satan knows how to work his way in, even when we're trying to move forward and reach that end zone.

I know Satan has caused a tunover for me MORE than once... I can see the endzone, and WHAM! I'm sacked. Or I go for something big and throw that Hail Mary pass - and out of nowhere Satan grabs the ball right out of the air and books it to the other endzone. I know I've felt like I'm in those last two crucial seconds, winding up to kick the field goal of my life. Then I kick it and feel like I've conquered that fear. I've moved past that anger. I've won the battle with an addiction. Then the call comes back and my field goal was no good. Satan called a time out right before the snap. Maybe by bringing an old friend back into my life, or bringing up painful memories, or triggering old feelings... Satan tries to take away the victory.

But here's the thing. Even though all of the odds can be against us... we're down and it's because of bad decisions we made early on and throughout, there's only 2 seconds left, we thought we had victory, but then it was ripped away... even though it looks like we're up against AMAZING odds... We can have the victory!

We've got an even better kicker than the Cowboys (though this rookie IS pretty darn good)! We've got Jesus Christ and the victory he won on the cross. So you see... the two point conversion after the touchdown would have tied up the game and would've been nice... the Cowboys got even better! They got a game-winning field goal. They got even MORE than they'd hoped for.

And we do too.