Life’s Archery Range: The Sure Shot vs The Missed Mark

This is a Sunday devotional made at the Sure Shot Archery Tournament sponsored by Northwest Christian School at Corner Archery in Phoenix, AZ on March 24th, 2024.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Geoff: Let’s take 15-20 minutes and do a, do a devotional. So I’ve asked Vin to share a little bit from God’s work. And I’ll give it over to Vin.

Vin: Hey everybody, thanks for sticking around. Uh, thanks for the introduction, Geoff.

Geoff: And let me, let me also say, we’ve got 12 pizzas showing up in just a little bit.

Vin: Stick around for the 12 pizzas.

My name is Vin. It’s like Vin Diesel, or Vin number. When Geoff asked me to speak at a devotional for archery, Wow! What better, what better topic or what better timing for it to bring up the topic of sin? Sin is typically known in Christian circles as being, missing the mark. And in non-Christian circles, some people might find it to be a foreign concept entirely.

Like what is sin? Why are you calling me a sinner? Well, we’re told that from the moment we’re born. We are to be considered sinners. We have missed the target. So whether we are Christian or not Christian, apparently we were all born as some sort of, an archer, if you will. But even if we’re like little babies and stuff, we can’t pick up a bow and arrow.

We can’t shoot for wherever the target is. What is the target? We don’t even know where the target is or that there was a target. So, that’s what I’m here today to talk about. Can you imagine being told that as you’re going through life, you have missed the target? You have not hit the goal. There was a goal for your life put there by God and you’ve been missing it your entire life.

That happened to me. It wasn’t until the age of 38 years old. Just under eight years ago, that I found out I was a sinner. I found out that I have been missing the mark. I have been doing everything in my life to please myself. I have been hitting my own targets, but not knowing that there was another target put there from God for me to hit. But I haven’t been anywhere near it. No where close to it.

So, What is the mark? Well, the mark is God’s desire for us. It’s his righteousness. It’s his righteous will for us. When he wants us to do his desire, he wants our wills to be in alignment with his will. So if I’m going around and I am taking aim, randomly at whatever is in front of me, but there is a specific target that I should be hitting or should be aiming for.

But I’m not even aiming for it. I’m missing the mark.

And for me, I discovered that the mark was very far away. We all have our own wills, our own desires, our own urges, our own cravings in life. And when I was growing up, I pursued every one of them for myself. I did what I thought was good in my own eyes. But I decided that my choices, my decisions in life have not led to a good outcome.

I was not successful in my eyes. I was not happy with where I was at, with the choices that I’ve made. The decisions I’ve made in my life have brought me down. So I wondered to myself, is there a better way? Is there a better way to go through life? Is there a better goal that I should be having? Except….instead of just pursuing what I thought was right in my own eyes.

And yes, there is. God’s got a target for us. Every single one of us, whether we are Christian or not Christian, it’s not the big blue part. It’s not the white part here in the middle. It’s the X and we’re supposed to hit that X. Not just once, not just 1 out of 10 times, but every single time.

So yeah, we can once in a while hit that mark. It’s true. But how do we hit it every single time? This one right here, this, this, range is 18 meters, I believe. And I’ve been watching all of these young people shoot for the target. And I’ve been watching some of them hit it, and I’ve been watching their faces light up.

And as their faces light up, I actually light up too. It’s enjoyable for me to see them hit the target. I don’t see any of their faces lighting up when they’re missing the target. Some people completely miss the paper. Some people are in the blue, but if they’re completely missing the target, they’re not smiling when they come back.

They’re not smiling when they put their bow down. There’s just this desire to hit that target. But some of us don’t even know that God put a target there for each of us. We’re supposed to hit the target that God put there for us. How do we even know where it’s at? How do we even know as we go through life, that there’s a better way?

So we’re supposed to align our desires and align God’s desires so that they’re the same. What I want should be what God wants. We should be equal and on par, but if there is a distance of 18 meters, that’s here, but then in life, there’s sometimes even a greater chasm than that. Sometimes the target could be behind me and I could be shooting in the wrong direction.

And actually, I was shooting in the wrong direction most of my life. And I run into people…. I run an addiction recovery class. I’ve been doing it for 15 months now. And I run into people who, they have a particular way of doing things. They have this way of habitually doing the same thing over and over and over again.

And they keep digging themselves deeper and deeper into a hole. And their lives don’t look good. I volunteer at a halfway house. I run into more people who have not done well for themselves. Their lives could be better. So, they need to have a different standard in their life. They need to have a different thing to shoot for.

Something, a target that is not far away, but something that is attainable. But so far in their lives, they haven’t been able to do it. So how do they do it? Well,

This was a string that was given to me when I was training for the NASP basic archery instruction. It’s to pretend like I had a bow string and I can draw it back. So as I draw it back, I can try to align my face down and look at the string and I can aim for the target. I could try to have my index finger near my mouth.

And then when I release. I’m supposed to let it go back. And that’s all the basic archery instruction. They teach you 11 steps for NASP. That’s National Archery in the Schools Program. Behind me, there’s 11 steps of shooting and you can go through it. There’s the Stance, there’s the Nock, there’s the Hook and the Grip, there’s the Set, there’s the Setup, and number 6 says to Draw.

So as we draw back on our bowstring, draw back on whatever it is, our, our selfish desires, we draw it closer. So we pull the string, we create tension, we’re pulling it towards us. We’re getting it all tensioned up. This could represent the things that we seek in life. This could represent the things that we seek to do for ourselves, not for anyone else, not for God, but for ourselves.

But if we can draw this string back and try maybe reading scripture, try maybe in the privacy of our own homes to pray, try to do something different in our lives. Asking God for help, asking for guidance. God can draw us near to him. So even if the target that God set in my life behind me, and I was faced the wrong way as an infant, God will draw me to the target.

Not so that it’s 18 meters away, but that it can be right in front of me. And I should be able to hit that bullseye. Every single time. Every single time I should be able to hit the bullseye. But I haven’t been, there’s only one person who has ever been able to accomplish that. That’s Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is, well, he’s the archer that never misses.

So even if we are non-Christians and we’re saying we’re going through life, I don’t believe in this target stuff. I don’t believe in this archery stuff. I don’t believe in drawing a string back with my own selfish desires. I don’t believe in God drawing me near to him. What you can understand is that when you miss the mark, it doesn’t feel good.

When you’re aiming at something that you thought you put in front of your, your face. This, let’s say you put your own target of something else in front and you’ve still missed the target. I can tell you that you have not found that to be pleasurable when you turn around and you put your bow down and you walk back, you’re not happy that you missed the target.

There’s a Bible verse that says Romans 3:23

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” So that mark that we’re aiming for is the glory of God. It is God’s will for us to aim right here to hit the bullseye, not just to hit the white part, but to hit the X.

But in James 4:8, like I was saying. If I can draw near to God, drawing near to God by praying, drawing near to God by reading scripture, it says,

“Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.” And I’m looking at these bales over there. One, two, three, four, five, and they have wheels on them. And I was imagining maybe someone behind these bales, pushing the bale closer to me so that it is right in front of me.

So even if it is right in front of me, I don’t even need to draw back on a bow. I should be able to hit that X. Why do I still miss it? Because suddenly as I’m aiming for the X that’s right in front of me, I see something up in the sky and my arrow flies up there. I see a squirrel to the side. My arrow flies over there.

I’m constantly hit with distractions in life. Things that for just a brief second seem more appealing than what’s right in front of me. These distractions can be overcome if I have my focus on God. These 11 steps of shooting, I personally think the first step should be find the target. Find the target.

But we can’t do it on our own. We have to ask God to put the target in front of us so we know what we’re aiming for. So we know what the goal is. If we don’t know what the goal is, we’re just aimlessly shooting our arrows everywhere. We’re not, we’re not accomplishing anything. There’s no satisfaction in our lives.

And there’s something that is empty within us, a hole within us that we’re trying to fill and we go through life, trying to fill it. The people I run into, they’re drug addicts, they’re alcoholics. They’re trying to fill it with things in their life that it just seems like it’s an insatiable pit for them.

They’ve never been able to fill that hole in their life. But when they start doing the will of God and their will aligns with God’s will, there starts to be more satisfaction, more gratification in their lives. So it would be great if the distance between us and the target could be eliminated. I think that the person who would be moving one of those bales, the person that would move it on those wheels closer to me, would be Jesus Christ himself, the one who never missed.

And he knows that we miss and he’s trying to help us and we need to pray to him. We need to ask him to please help us out of the dark hole that we put ourselves into. Help us to have a better life. Help us to have a more gratifying, a more satisfying, a more, I’m hitting the bullseye every single time life.

And yes, once in a while we’ll look up when we see a bird, even though the target’s right in front of us. Yes. Once in a while we’ll shoot the arrow to the side, even though the target’s right in front of us. But we are lucky as Christians to have that target in front of us. But the thing that I’ve noticed with other people is that they’ve never known a different way of doing things.

And so it’s one of the things in the Bible. It’s the great commission that we’re supposed to go forth and let other people know, know about this guy named Jesus, know that there’s a gospel message, the good news, and we can share that with them. So they can start to get an idea of what is missing in their life.

What is that cavernous space in their heart? That they need to fill. With what? With God. And that’s the goal. So when we are sinners, when we sin, we’re just missing the mark. It doesn’t matter if I got really, really close to that X. If I miss it just a little bit. I’m categorized as someone who has missed the mark.

Another word for missing the mark could be failure. I don’t want to say to any one of these young people who have not hit the bullseye. Hey, it looks like you’ve failed again. That’s terrible. That won’t be uplifting whatsoever. But in God’s eyes, when we’re not hitting the mark, we have failed, but he’s not saying that’s a wrap.

It’s over. I’m done with you. He is trying to put that target on wheels. He is trying to angle it right in front of our faces so that we won’t miss. He’s doing everything in his power. So we get the opportunity to hit that bullseye so that we don’t have to try too hard, but it takes practice. There’s, there’s 11 more steps there.

And if you add the step that I said, identify the target, there’s 12 steps there. And we got to do that every single time that we’re going to notch—nock— an arrow and shoot it. So every single time we’re practicing more and more, I was watching in this lane here on the first bail, there was two young guys shooting and they weren’t doing so hot.

The first few rounds. But when they practiced more and more, they started getting closer and closer. So for each of us, as we practice hitting the bullseye, we get better and better. And it takes less effort. It becomes like second nature. I’ve been in here on Tuesdays when there’s another gentleman here who he’s always in this lane and he is almost always hitting the bullseye, but he’s here every single day and he’s practicing hour after hour after hour.

It would be beautiful if Christians could do that. It would be amazing if we went in and just practiced being good followers of God every single day. But we get distracted, and we seek what is desirable to ourselves, not realizing that the greater prize is to please our Father in Heaven. The greater prize is not just to hit the bullseye, but knowing that once we do what our Father in Heaven asks us to do, He’s going to have a pizza party.

Aren’t we going to have some pizza here soon? He’s going to take us out to ice cream. It’s not just about, Oh, okay. I have a little warm and fuzzy feeling here because I hit the X. There’s a prize. We get rewards in heaven. So I want everyone here to realize that whether you wanted to be an archer or not, or you thought you were just taking your child here to practice archery.

Each and every single one of us have a target in our lives that we have to hit. And if we don’t hit that target, we feel bad about it and we need practice and we need prayer and we need to read scripture and we need Jesus to put that target in front of us because we will never hit the target if we don’t even know where it’s at.

We need Jesus to put the target right in front of us and we’ll still miss it. But we’ll miss it less. Anyways, I smell pizza. Thank you all for listening. I do appreciate it. If you have any questions even about addiction recovery, that’s actually my specialty, just come and find me afterwards.