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When God Met Me on the Tennis Court

Updated: Jul 26

Summertime and tennis are synonymous for me. I took my first city recreation tennis lesson at the age of nine and have been hooked ever since. Growing up in a small western Kansas town meant tennis was limited to certain seasons of the year. Maybe that's why I still find myself drawn to the courts every summer, even when it's probably too hot to play! For some reason known only to God, He gave me a love for this sport and the physical health to continue playing all these years. I'm grateful for both.


What is it for you? What do you love doing apart from teaching? What activity makes you lose track of time because you're so engaged? Gardening? Crafting? Fishing? Golfing? Hiking? Whatever it is, I believe those interests are God-given. God often uses the things we love most to draw us closer to Him. It's one more reminder of how personal our God is. He meets each of us where we are, often connecting spiritual truths to the very things that bring us joy.


That happened to me recently. Since it's summertime, I thought I'd share a few lessons the Lord impressed on my heart while on the tennis court! Even if you've never picked up a tennis racquet, I hope you'll keep reading. My prayer is that these insights will encourage and inspire you to listen for God's voice during your own favorite summer activity.


I usually play tennis with my husband, but he was out of town, so I headed to the courts alone with a basket of balls to practice my serve. I've done this countless times, so I expected it to be just another ordinary practice session. However, God had something else in mind. After warming up, I started serving and found myself making spiritual connections. That was unusual because I'm typically laser-focused on the technical side of my serve. This time, however, I sensed the Holy Spirit quietly teaching me. Every few minutes another thought would come to mind. I'd stop, pull out my phone, record a voice memo, and go back to serving. Five or ten minutes later, I'd stop again to record another insight.


The older I get, the more I've learned not to ignore those moments. When the Holy Spirit begins connecting everyday experiences with spiritual truths, I've discovered it's worth putting everything else on pause to listen. If someone had been watching, they probably would have wondered what in the world I was doing! I let those recordings sit for more than a month before listening to them again. As I did, I realized the Lord wasn't just teaching me about tennis. He was reminding me how the Christian life works.


One of the hardest skills in tennis is the serve because several fundamentals must work together. Your toss, grip, footwork, timing, and focus all matter. If one gets out of sync, the serve usually falls apart. Even after playing for more than fifty years, I still have to practice regularly if I want any level of consistency. That afternoon, as I filled my basket with balls, the first lesson came almost immediately. I sensed the Lord whispering, "Some things in your life may always be hard."


I’m not overly thrilled with that thought. We naturally want to overcome our weaknesses. We want to master them, put them behind us, and move on. However, the more I served, the more I thought about Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 12:1-10. Paul pleaded with God three times to remove his thorn in the flesh. God's answer wasn't to remove the struggle but to provide the strength Paul needed to endure it. "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Paul eventually reached the place where he could surrender his area of weakness knowing it was only through his weakness he could experience God’s strength.


As I continued serving, I realized there are areas of my life that may always require a greater dependence on God. For me, one of those areas is patience. Have I grown? Absolutely. Have I mastered it? Not even close. I suspect it will always be something I bring before the Lord because it continually reminds me how much I need Him.


Perhaps you have an area like that, too. Maybe it's fear, anxiety, trusting God with the unknown, extending grace, or letting go of control. We often pray that God will simply take those struggles away, but sometimes He chooses instead to meet us in the middle of them. Those ongoing challenges become daily reminders that we were never meant to live the Christian life in our own strength.


Standing on the baseline that afternoon, I realized I may never have the perfect tennis serve, and that's okay. Every time I practice, I'm reminded that improvement requires humility, persistence, and accepting that I still have something to learn. In much the same way, God often uses our weaknesses to keep us dependent on Him, preventing us from believing we've somehow arrived or that we can faithfully follow Him apart from His strength.


As I continued serving, another lesson unfolded. One of the biggest challenges in serving is the toss. A poor toss affects everything that follows. Even with a good swing, it's difficult to hit a quality serve if the ball isn't in the right place. The Lord gently reminded me that the same thing is true in my walk with Him. When my life isn't centered on the right things, everything else begins to suffer. 


I started thinking about basic spiritual disciplines that keep us aligned with Christ (e.g., spending time in God's Word, praying, fixing our eyes on Jesus, remembering who we are in Him). Spiritual disciplines aren't complicated, but they are foundational. When I neglect them, I find myself frustrated, distracted, or reacting to circumstances instead of responding in faith. Just like a serve depends on several fundamentals working together, a healthy spiritual life does as well. If we lose sight of Jesus, neglect our relationship with Him, or forget our identity in Christ, our lives drift off target. It may not happen all at once, but eventually the fruit of our life reveals that one of the essentials has slipped.


As I continued practicing, the Lord wasn't finished teaching me. All of a sudden, the wind picked up, and serves that had been landing comfortably inside the service box started drifting long or wide. I hadn't changed my technique, but the conditions had changed. Life is like that. Sometimes difficult circumstances blow into our lives without warning—a challenging administrator, a difficult parent conference, unexpected health concerns, or family struggles. Those moments don't change the fundamentals of our faith; they remind us how desperately we need them. When life gets hard, we should never abandon God's Word, prayer, or our focus on Christ. Instead, we should cling to them even more tightly.


Another observation surprised me as my practice session continued. Sometimes I felt like I had done everything correctly. The toss was good, my feet were set, and I had made solid contact with the ball. Yet the serve still missed the service box. I don't understand that in tennis, and I certainly don't understand it in life.


There are seasons when we faithfully obey God, make wise decisions, and still don't experience the outcome we hoped for. We can easily become discouraged and wonder if we've done something wrong. We must remember that faithfulness and favorable outcomes are not always synonymous. Our responsibility is obedience. The results belong to God.


Another lesson hit especially close to home. Occasionally I would become frustrated with my toss. Rather than stopping, resetting, and trying again, I'd simply swing anyway, hoping I could somehow muscle the ball into the service box. Sometimes it worked, but it was never my best serve. Most of the time, it only reinforced bad habits.


How often do we do that spiritually? Instead of stopping to pray, refocus, or seek God's wisdom, we push ahead hoping "good enough" will be enough. The Lord often invites us to pause before proceeding. A few moments spent resetting our hearts can save us from making decisions we'll later regret.


Near the end of my practice, I did something I've done for years. After hitting most of the basket, I pretended I was playing a real match. I imagined the score was close and challenged myself to serve without double faulting. By then I usually served much better because I had put in the practice.


That made me think about our days as educators. We don't wait until we're standing in front of a difficult class, facing a challenging conversation with a parent, or navigating conflict with a colleague before deciding how we'll respond. Time spent with God each day prepares us for moments we haven't yet encountered. We may not know exactly what lies ahead, but we can prepare our hearts before the first challenge arrives.


Toward the end, I started getting tired. My concentration slipped. Old habits began creeping back into my serve, and mistakes became more frequent. Immediately another lesson surfaced. When we're physically, emotionally, or spiritually tired, it's much easier to drift back into old patterns. We become impatient, lose our focus, neglect time with God, or begin relying on our own strength instead of His. The fundamentals don't become less important when we're weary. They become more important than ever.


As I gathered the last few tennis balls, I smiled. What began as an ordinary practice session had become a sweet conversation with the Lord. Who would have thought a basket of tennis balls could become a classroom? I'm learning that God doesn't just speak in church sanctuaries or during quiet times with an open Bible. He often meets us in ordinary moments, using the activities we love to remind us of extraordinary truths.


Wherever this summer finds you—in your garden, on a hiking trail, at a lake, on a golf course, in your workshop, or on a tennis court—I hope you'll listen closely. Your Heavenly Father delights in meeting you, and you never know where that might be. Sometimes He reveals Himself in the ordinary moments of life—even on a tennis court.


 If you want support on your journey, access our free resources at www.victoriouseducator.com.


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