A former player of the Portland Timbers and assistant Corban soccer coach, Troy Ready, spoke at chapel about the importance of putting God first.
Ready’s father passed away recently, which, Ready said, put his life into perspective.
“My father was a great man who loved me and my mother very much,” Ready said. “When he died, it made me start to really think about what I am living for and whether or not I am focused on what is important.”
Ready wanted to get the message across to students that the point of following Jesus is not for what he can do for us, but because of who he is. Ready said that “treasuring the stuff instead of the savior” is a practice all believers fall victim to.
“Jesus is pretty straight forward in asking us why we seek him,” Ready said. “Usually, what we think are good intentions in following him are often actually mixed in with an ample amount of self desire.”
McKenna Mathews, who knows Ready through his work with Frontier Missions, found his sermon to be a “clear reminder from scripture that Christianity ought to be more simple than we make it.”
“It really is so simple, right?” Mathews said. “Jesus is the source of life and joy for believers. If we start each day being satisfied in him, then we are good to go.”
Ready, who now works as a chaplain for the Timbers, said he knows how hard it can be to stop focusing on material possessions and start focusing on Jesus.
“As a member of the Timber’s club, I was given a championship ring after they won last year,” Ready said. “It’s neat, and I’m sure someday it will be really fun to show my grand kids, but it is a year later now, and no one is sitting around doting over those rings anymore. It’s food that perishes. It did taste good, but it doesn’t endure.”
Angela Mosca thought Ready did a good job of “being engaging and recognizing that he is speaking to college students who want to be entertained.” Mosca appreciated Ready’s upbeat speaking style.
“He really made the topic interesting and relatable for our age range, and I understood what he had to say,” Mosca said.
Ready said he has seen the fulfillment that Jesus can bring to people through his work with the Timbers. “When a player comes to me and says they have changed through reading and obeying God’s word, that is the bread that lasts,” he said.
“Food that perishes is a problem,” Ready said. “It may taste good today, but it is going to be moldy tomorrow. The longing for approval, for acceptance, for success, may satisfy temporarily, but you are going to be hungry again.”
Ready summed up his sermon with one simple appeal: to “chase relentlessly after the bread that lasts.”
“Be aware, brothers and sisters. The momentary tastiness of the food that perishes is intensely strong and abundantly real,” Ready said. “You have to fight. You have to be a warrior, and you are.”