Strengthening Your Family
By Tony Dungy and Nathan Whitaker
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About this ebook
Read all seven! The complete Uncommon Life Weekly Challenge series includes the following:
- Achieving Your Potential
- Building Your Team
- Developing Your Core
- Living Your Life’s Purpose
- Maximizing Your Influence
- Strengthening Your Faith
- Strengthening Your Family
Tony Dungy
Tony Dungy and his wife Lauren Dungy are active members of a number of family, faith, and community-based organizations, including All Pro Dad, iMom, Fellowship of Chrstian Athletes, Mentors for Life, Family First, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, and the Boys and Girls Club of America. Tony is a former NFL player and retired head coach of the 2006 Superbowl Champions, the Indianapolis Colts of the National Football League.
Read more from Tony Dungy
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Strengthening Your Family - Tony Dungy
How to Use This Weekly Challenge
We hope you will enjoy reading The Uncommon Life Weekly Challenge—Strengthening Your Family. The foundational family principles in this devotional were taken from The One Year Uncommon Life Daily Challenge—a book we collaborated on together.
While The Uncommon Life Weekly Challenge—Strengthening Your Family offers weekly readings instead of daily ones, our hope is that the format will prove useful for regular doses of encouragement and strength—one for each week of the year. It’s possible that instead of getting together every day for devotions, your family opts for a weekly devotional time. Or maybe you’re a coach or a sports chaplain who has set aside time once a week for devotions with your team. Or perhaps you attend a weekly prayer meeting that would benefit from a short devotional time. It may also be the case that weekly personal devotions fit better into your schedule than a daily devotional routine. On the flip side, another option is to go ahead and read the devotions on a daily basis, either consecutively for fifty-two days or sporadically throughout the year. Whether read on a daily or weekly basis, or in a group or an individual setting, the fundamentals highlighted in The Uncommon Life Weekly Challenge—Strengthening Your Family will keep you anchored in what God’s Word says about family life. And check out www.coachdungy.com for more resources.
Each Family Foundation includes Scripture and an Uncommon Key—an application or action to implement based on what you’ve just read. This isn’t just a read-it-and-you’re-done
type of devotional. The goal is to not only engage your mind but also to challenge your heart with the family-strengthening principles of God’s message to us through his Word, the Bible.
If you miss a week, keep going. Don’t try to catch up, and don’t feel guilty. Last week is gone—spend time with God today. Our prayer is that every week you will be blessed by what you read and challenged to do more for your family—whether they are your blood relatives, a special group God has placed you in, or the extended family of God’s Kingdom.
Tony Dungy
Nathan Whitaker
WEEK 1
Family Foundation: The Importance of a Look Squad
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.
Revelation 21:1-2
In practice each week, our team would run our plays against a look squad.
That’s what we call our backup players who simulate the other team’s techniques as closely as possible. The simulation helps the first team’s players visualize how our plays will work against the other team’s. When we run a play and see it executed successfully in practice, we have the confidence to run it successfully during the game.
Visualization increases chances of success—not just in football but in any area of life. If we can’t see ourselves succeeding as workers, leaders, parents, or spouses, for example, we won’t have any confidence in those roles and be able to perform them well. But if we can see ourselves fulfilling our responsibilities effectively, achieving our goals, and relating to others healthily, we are much more likely to have the vision and the confidence to do those things. We tend to be able to accomplish what we can see.
God gives us a lot of pictures in the Bible—visions of who we are becoming and what His Kingdom is like. Today’s passage from Revelation is encouraging because it shows us our future with Him forever, as members of His family. If we can see our tomorrow and know how good it is, we can live in confidence today. We have courage to face anything when we know this is what awaits us on the other side of it.
Think of life as practice and the visions and instructions of Scripture as a look squad.
Those words aren’t the full picture, because words can only tell us so much. The reality of the actual game
will look a little different. But like the look squad during a week of practice, Scripture’s descriptions of the future give us and our families an idea of where we’re headed and what it will be like when we get there. We can know that God is standing there waiting for us with outstretched arms. And if we can see
that future, we will have a much better idea of how to prepare for it, much more confidence as we move forward, and much more courage to handle anything today.
UNCOMMON KEY > When you read God’s Word on a regular basis, you’ll discover what your future holds. Claim His promises and pay attention to His instructions. Seeing God in your tomorrow is the key to having confidence and courage today.
WEEK 2
Family Foundation: Nothing Means Nothing
I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. . . . Indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:38-39
These verses from the apostle Paul are one of the greatest passages of hope, assurance, and comfort you will find anywhere in Scripture. For me, this passage has also been one of the ever-present reminders and renewal for the courage I have needed through the years and will continue to need to face the challenges and get past the obstacles of each day.
I’d venture a guess that you find reassurance in these verses too. Times get tough, things look bleak, the clouds roll in, and the sunshine rolls out. And yet there is nothing that can separate us from the love of Christ.
One of the things that caused me some reservations when deciding whether to write Quiet Strength was that I wasn’t sure anything that I had done was worthy of mention. What parts of my life would interest readers? But then when Nathan and I began the process of writing the book, I realized that it wasn’t just the joys that might be interesting for them to read about, but also some of the disappointments and heartaches and how I tried to walk on. What I went through might be a blessing and a comfort for others who have experienced similar trials.
In fact, we opened the book detailing a terrifically low point in my life—being fired by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It was a simple decision to start there—we knew that every reader could relate to a time when personal dreams have been dashed.
The one thing I knew to be true, but was reminded of through this process, was that I was never separated from God and God’s love revealed through what His Son Jesus Christ did