Prairie View A & M University in Texas lost 80 football games in a row back in the ’90s. The California Institute of Technology men’s basketball team went 0-207 between 1996 and 2007.
How do I know this? I looked it up. I typed “famous losing streaks” into my computer search engine and these schools were listed along with other teams and individuals who hold records for one thing: losing.
Famous for failing—ouch.
I became curious about epic losing streaks when I was watching an opening-round match in the recent U.S. Open tennis tournament pitting an American named Donald Young against top-ranked Roger Federer.
Young, once a highly touted up-and-comer on the pro tour, had ended a dismal 17-match losing skid by winning one match at a tournament just before the Open. Now he was facing the mighty Federer in front of millions of U.S. Open television viewers who were told, in great detail, all about Young’s bad, bad season.
Predictably, Federer cleaned his clock and Young left the court as “that guy who had now lost 18 out of his last 19 matches.”
Eighteen cities, 18 different hotel rooms, 18 tournaments, 18 first-round losses, 18 flights to move on to the next city, the next tournament, the next first-round match.
As the sportscasters referred to Young’s losing streak over and over, I realized that while our culture certainly exalts big winners, we’re also obsessed with big losers.
Maybe that’s because most of us, to some degree, can relate. Most of us have been there. Most of us have had bad seasons and stretches in life we’d like to forget.
But sometimes forgetting isn’t easy, especially if there are others around who remember and remind us.
How thankful I am that God isn’t necessarily among them.
Perhaps an omniscient God doesn’t literally forget our mistakes and sins, but He does choose not to remember them under certain conditions.
I forget column ideas that pop into my head while I’m driving. I forget to turn off the oven. I occasionally forget I’ve already read a book until I’m a third of the way through the doggone thing again. I too often forget people’s names.
God doesn’t forget like that, but if we yield our lives to Him and seek forgiveness on His terms, accepting and embracing the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, God makes some amazing, grace-packed promises to us.
For starters, He vows to “not remember” our sins (Isaiah 43:25), to remove our sins from us “as far as the east is from the west,” to cast our sins “into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19), and to “cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
It’s like God takes the sins of repentant believers, ties an anchor on them, chunks them into the deepest ocean, dusts off His hands, and then turns to us and says, “Let’s leave them there forever.”
I don’t know about you, but that’s good news to me.
At the risk of sounding like an infomercial announcer, I must also quickly and emphatically add, “But wait, there’s more!”
Not only does God promise to wipe our slates clean when we seek His forgiveness, He actually also fills them with good stuff—theologians call it the “imputed righteousness of Christ.”
That’s right—in terms of our “legal” standing before God, Christians are given credit for the perfection of Jesus.
No losses in the record books for believers in Christ. Nothing to be dogged by, ridiculed for, or talked about. No fingers pointing at us.
Just the perfect life of Jesus covering our very imperfect lives.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.
“…though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow…” (Isaiah 1:18)