Dear Greater Gold Wrestlers,
I hope everything has been going well in your lives! Your coaches have told me your practices have been going great. I encourage you to soak up all the wrestling technique you can because spring and summer wrestlers produce winter champions. Wrestling freestyle and Greco-Roman helped me pull away from the rest of the competition who just wrestled during the winter months. I promise your current sacrifice will pay off in the future.
You are so blessed to have amazing coaches, parents, and leaders who deeply care about you and your future success in wrestling and life. Please, continue to treat your coaches with the utmost respect. It has been said,
“No man is an island,” and I completely agree. We cannot become successful on our own. We need to stay connected to our families, teachers, coaches, and most importantly, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. There is no way I could have won a gold medal in the Olympics without God, my coaches, family, and friends. Even though wrestling is an individual sport, preparation is always a team sport. We should lean into others and allow others to lean into us.
This morning when I was driving back from class I was wondering why there are so many people on this earth (6 Billion). Once I got home, I sat down, opened my Bible, and prayed for God to show me His truth. The Bible says in Mark 12:30,
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” I believe God created so many of us because He loves humans so much and wants to have a personal relationship with us, but God is holy, righteous, and perfect and cannot have a relationship with sinners. Romans 3:23 says,
“For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” We have all made mistakes. We have all sinned, but even in our sin, God still loves us. John 3:16 says,
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” God loved us enough to come down to earth as His Son Jesus and pay the wages for our sin in full so we could be free of judgment. Romans 6:23 says,
“For the wages of sin is death, BUT the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.” As we believe in Jesus, not only does He pay or bail for sin, we also receive the free gift of eternal life in Heaven.
How can we secure eternal life? We must repent of all our past, present, and futures sins and truly believe Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead. Romans 10:9-10 says,
“That if you confess with your mouth that, ‘Jesus is Lord’, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.” If you desire to be saved by the Blood of Christ, I encourage you to talk to one of your Greater Gold Coaches about the most important decision we can ever make. They would be honored to talk and pray with you about it accepting Christ.
When we choose Jesus as our Lord and Savoir, He follows through with an amazing purpose for our life. Our ultimate purpose in life is to
“Know God and Make Him Known.” We
“Know God” by loving Him, studying about Him in the Bible, and speaking to Him through prayer. We
“Make God Known” by sharing our faith and loving others. The rest of Mark 12:30 says,
“Love your neighbor as yourself.” When we focus on loving everybody everyday in everyway, people will notice there is something different about us. Yes, we
“Make God Known” by telling others about salvation through Jesus Christ, but we also
“Make God Known” by simply loving others and allowing people to see God’s Spirit inside of us.
I encourage, all of you, to begin loving God more. Without God, we can’t breath, hear, see, walk, talk, have fun with our friends, or wrestle. Don’t allow God to just be part of your life. Make Him
ALL of your life! Talk to God through prayer. Allow Him to talk back to you by reading your Bible. Worship God through song and thankfulness make sure to spend time with other Christian in the Body of Christ. Having fellowship with other believers is encouraging and will help hold you accountable to your actions.
Since we have Greater Gold Wrestling Academy’s and Camps in different states, I can’t make every single practice, but whenever time allows, I look forward to seeing you, teaching you some wrestling, and encouraging you with some of the lessons God continues to teach me through His Word.
I believe in all of you! Keep working hard to achieve the gold medals on and off the wrestling mat, but always know, there is a Greater Gold through Faith in Jesus Christ.
“Then the Almighty will be your gold.” Job 22:25
Looking Straight Up,
Brandon Slay
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