Britt Wisener: The Cure for Pride

Life isn’t always what we set out for it to be. There are often paths that we end up taking that aren’t in our original plans. In my life, one of those was getting a degree and playing soccer at a little school in northwest Arkansas called John Brown University, and because of it, I’ll never be the same.

JBU wasn’t on my original list of colleges. When I was first searching for schools, my desired major wasn’t offered there, so it naturally didn’t pique my interest. However, studying what I wanted wasn’t the only important piece of college for me – playing soccer was too. This added JBU to my list late in the game, and a visit there in January of my senior year of high school helped solidify it as my future college.

Like any competitive athlete would, I strove from the start to be the best goalkeeper on the field at all times, no matter what. Also like many competitive athletes do, I had a problem with pride that led to insecurity and bitterness. This was a struggle that had been present before college, and I found myself continuing to fall into it as I fought for playing time.

What would be the cure for my pride? As John Piper puts it, “Unwavering faith in God’s sovereign future grace.” This is what God continually taught me during my time at JBU, from all sides and all sorts of people. “Unwavering faith in God’s sovereign future grace” was clearly the driving force behind everything, from chapels and classes to practices and games. During my tenure, this was shown in the men’s soccer program by our set of core values, called ROCS-3: relentlessly pursue excellence; own our culture and tradition; compete with courage, toughness, and class; sharpen and be sharpened; and I am third. That last core value, I am third, was most foundational, as it called us to value our teammates above ourselves, and God before all others. Adherence to these values remained prevalent across two coaches, five iterations of our team, and more than fifty team members, and it resulted in one culture which lifted up Christ over all.

Praise be to God, my pride was no match for the realization of His total sovereignty that He grew in me, and He used the Christ-focused culture of the JBU men’s soccer program to help me immensely in that. The continual pursuit of Christ exemplified by coaches, teammates, and others guided me to continue on the path of growing in Christ-likeness. While I’m not totally free of pride, their examples certainly helped lead to a growth in Christ-exalting humility and further sanctification in other areas, and I continue to see the effects of those to this day.

Looking back on my entire time at JBU, I can see my team accomplished some pretty cool things – we won big games, we broke records, and we made history. Still, none of those are the pinnacle. My favorite part of my time at JBU is the God-fearing culture of the men’s soccer program and the lifelong brothers that I made there. I will carry that with me forever.

Britt will graduate this spring with a degree in interdisciplinary studies. Currently engaged to graduating volleyball student-athlete Megan Beck, the two plan on marrying later this year while he begins graduate work at John Brown University – a Masters of Business Administration with a concentration in design thinking and innovation.