Christian podcaster's response to Simone Biles quitting on her team

Episode 169, In the Beginning Was the Word.

Amen. The Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.

Welcome to episode 169. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I am going to take a little turn or a little twist of what I normally talk about, and I want to apply something that is currently going on or something that has already happened a couple days ago, and it's the story about Simone Biles that quit on her Olympic team. And I've got some ideas, or I've got some thoughts on that, and I want to go to the scripture and show you what's going on in this world. And I think it starts in Isaiah, Isaiah 5:20. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. If you ever believe that you are walking in an upside-down world, it is true. This is the end of the times. I believe that we are at the last of the end days. I believe, and I've said this multiple times, Jesus is one day closer to returning today than he was yesterday. But about this Simone Biles and what all this has to do with it, if you had noticed, everybody— NBC, all the Olympic stuff— before the competition began, she even had goat on the back of her uniform or leotard or whatever they wear. But she had a, a picture, I guess a bedazzled or some kind of some kind of something that had to go. I didn't see it. This poor girl, and I want to go on record as saying, look, we don't need to be chopping her down and making fun of her or anything like that. We need to pray for her. I've got a daughter that's a little bit older than her. I mean, she's just a little girl, and I really blame whoever the parent is or whoever the legal guardian, whoever the coach, for letting her put that on her outfit. Just for endorsements. I have never seen Tom Brady call himself the GOAT. I don't know that I ever— and I'm confident that Michael Jordan never called himself the GOAT while he was playing. And I don't know much about LeBron, but I don't think— he may have, but I don't know. I don't believe he ever called himself the GOAT while he was playing. You know, it's what other people call you. When you start calling yourself that, or when you start buying into that, I believe that is pride. And you know what the Bible says, we're about to go to it, but pride goes before the fall. And that is in Proverbs 16:18, and it's why we read our Bible because it wasn't pride goes before the fall, it is pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Better to be of a humble spirit with the lowly than to divide the spoil with the proud. Now I guess this is Solomon in Proverbs. He was the wisest man to ever have walked the earth. And he pretty much spoke it out. Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. I just believe that when— if you have put GOAT on the back of your uniform, then you are a little bit prideful. And I mean, I don't even know this lady, and I pray— and we're going to also talk about that our war is not against her. We are not fighting flesh and blood. So we— what we need to do for Simone is to pray for her. We need to lift her up and help restore her. But nobody tunes into the Olympics to see somebody quit. If she's struggling, I mean, I'm all for getting help. You know, you got to suck it up. You got a teammate. And if you've called yourself the GOAT, you have to finish. Even if— I mean, I believe she quit because she didn't want to get beat. And I believe it's part of this whole society that everybody gets a trophy. And so you can just call yourself great. Athletically, she is by far superior to probably everybody in the gymnastics world, but it's not just physical, it's physical and mental, and I would argue spiritual. Even that aside, when she bowed out, the people that won won because they were mentally tough and they were physically tough. And I believe this is reason number 753 for what's wrong with the world, is you become great by overcoming adversity, not running from it. Failure is a part of life. It's why we celebrate champions. Everyone that's listening to me has an idea of what it takes to put yourself in that kind of position to succeed. Victory goes to whoever's best on that day of competition. Only one team or one person wins the gold. No one tunes in to watch somebody quit. I would argue never ever— you can never ever ever ever quit. I mean, you see those people racing in the Olympics and you see them fall and busted and they've lost the race and they're all bloodied and— but they're limping across the finish line. And those people get cheered, and they get cheered because they did not quit. If you are going to do anything in life— and the reason I'm even bringing this up, it's really twofold. One, I want to tell you my first reaction was anger. How could she quit on her team? How could she quit on herself? How could she quit on her country? And all those things, I mean, that was my knee-jerk gut reaction. And then I started thinking about when Jesus was asked what, what was the great commandment in the law. And it is found in Matthew 22:36. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. So I just want you to see right there that Jesus hung the whole law and the prophets, the whole Old Testament, on love God and love people. And if we're to love God— and that's what we're doing by worshiping God and getting in his word and trying to understand what's going on— but love God. But it also says to love people. And this Simone Biles is a person, and she's God's favorite. She's God's little girl. And I guarantee you, he's not happy when people get angry and start cussing her. And it's a horrible thing. I'm telling you, as a parent of a child, I can't imagine if this was my daughter, all the hurt that I would be feeling for my daughter. When my initial knee-jerk reaction was, you know, she shouldn't have quit, she's an American, she hates to fly. I mean, all of that stuff. I'm just, I'm just as normal as you are, and I'm a competitive— I love sports. I'm having a hard time watching the Olympics this year, but I love— I just love watching people compete. But when I see somebody quit, I just wonder what's gone wrong. And I think it's just we have— we are losing our foundation, and we're losing the fact we're walking on the ceiling. Like we read in Isaiah at the beginning, good shall be called evil and evil shall be called good. In fact, you can probably, if research on Google what's going on, most of the articles are going to be positive— that all the courage that she had to quit and all of that stuff. But no, you— we tune into the Olympics to see who wins the gold. We tune into the Olympics to see you overcome all of the obstacles, all of the adversities, to see who's gonna win. Because each athlete, I don't care what country you're from, you've been training for most of your life. You have been training and for this day, for this week or 2 weeks on the calendar. And it's just, it blows my mind that someone could just throw their hands up and quit. I believe it is demonic, and I believe we are not warring against flesh and blood. And that's why I'm asking you, and that's why I come on here and why I want to talk about it. I want to tell you, you know, my imperfect action following after a perfect example. My initial reaction is, this is crazy. I got angry. You know, and then you start falling down the deep end. But when I started thinking about it, and then I started putting myself in the parent of this young lady, and it was like, oh my goodness. And then I remember that we're not warring against flesh and blood, and this person, if, if she does not have Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior, what we read in Proverbs, pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. If you don't think that her gymnastics career is destroyed, I don't know. I, I can't imagine Team USA— I mean, maybe they'll invite her back 4 years from now, but man, how do you trust that if it's going to get a little bit tough or she has a bad event that she's not just going to throw her hands up? And before I finish, I want to finish up with one more scripture, and it's in Ephesians. And we've talked about this when we put on the armor of God. Ephesians 6:12: For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. And then it starts talking about putting your armor on. But I just wanna remind you that we're not warring against flesh and blood. We are not warring against people. We are warring against evil and the spirit. And if you don't think that there is a ruler of the darkness of this age or against spiritual hosts of wickedness, in the heavenly places. If you don't believe in it, then you're not really believing in the Bible, or you're just reading the Bible. Paul says that there are different levels of demonic realm. Again, I go back to my Peretti book, This Present Darkness, and I see this little demon of pride maybe hooking his talons into Simone. And so she's prideful. Just going to be scriptural from there that a haughty spirit goes before a fall, and it's just Sad, but we need to pray against that spirit or that demon that is on her. And, and if you think about how high and elevated she was in the gymnastics world and even in America, I mean, she's on all kinds of commercials. I probably got a little bit of imp. I mean, I— if, if somebody's ever assigned to me, it's probably this little bitty old nothing imp that just comes and irritates me every now and then. But Simone has probably got some kind of general or 3 or 4-star general that's been assigned to her, one of these spiritual hosts of wickedness. And I just want to encourage you to pray when you think about her. If you, if you see any reports or if you see anything, instead of getting fired up like I did initially, get sorrowful for her and start praying. Feel some compassion for this young lady. And just pray for her and just pray that God would, would comfort her and that he would draw her to himself. Now, I'm not advocating that we support what she did, and I'm never for quitting, but I want you to see this in a different realm or the spirit realm. And let's pray. God, I thank you so much for your word. God, I thank you that you said you would never leave us nor forsake us. Holy Spirit, You are everywhere all the time, Lord. You know right where this young lady is. You know what's going on. And I bind up anything that's trying to come against her right now in Jesus' name. Any kind of demon that's trying to come against this Simone Biles, I bind up in Jesus' name. And I release the peace of God. And I pray in Jesus' name, Father, that you would draw her to yourself and that good people, Christians, would pray for her and try to hold her up. And God, I pray that she would see the error in her ways, and Lord, that she would repent and turn away from this. And God, we thank you, we love you, we ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you on the next episode.

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