Hunger, Habits, Humility

For IWUHoops, each season is a journey of men in the program trading the pursuit of me for the pursuit of 3.  Through intentional prayer, Bible study and community, God has continued to reveal new depths of an IAm3rd life.  

The 2016-2017 journey was one of a team filled with apathy learning to live a life marked by hunger, habits and humility.  Read Coach T's thoughts on this transformation HERE  

This offseason and preseason have seen IWUHoopers pursuing 'hunger, habits and humility.'   A pursuit of Hunger sets you in motion.  Habits keep you in motion.  Humility puts others in motion.  This pattern has taken some of the men in the program beyond mere growth and into transformation.  Over the next few weeks, we invite you to check back on the blog often to hear the stories of what the team is learning and who the players within the program are becoming.

Becoming A Hungry Team

We have been learning as a team what it means to have hunger. Hunger stems from a desire to grow and become what we are designed to be.

I have been deeply impacted over the past three years by the spiritual climate of this program, but this year seems to have taken it to a whole new level. We have an entire team that is passionate about growth and we are all developing an increasing hunger for the things that matter most.  That makes being a leader for these guys come easy. 

We have been talking a lot as a team about being honest with where we are at, but also being willing to move forward. This is what drives hunger for us, and it has been awesome to see how guys have grown just in the past few months of being a part of this program.  One of the guys I have really seen this hunger develop in is Evan Maxwell. A big part of his decision to transfer to IWU was his desire and hunger to grow, and the trajectory he is on is exciting to see as he develops as a basketball player and more importantly as a man of God. I’m super excited to see how Evan will continue to grow in his time here at IWU and I know you will enjoy reading his thoughts on the blog.

When you have a hunger to grow in your relationship with God as Evan is developing, that hunger seeps into every aspect of your life.  Over the course of my career, I have had major growth in the commitment and discipline it takes to have a lifelong pursuit of this hunger, and it has had a tangible difference in every aspect of my life.  Seeing this developing in the lives of my teammates has me excited to see what we can become as a team and what will happen to the trajectory that each individual is on.

Each season has its ups and downs, as does life.  The lessons we are learning about hunger, habits and humility will have implications on our families, careers, and life just as much as it does through the game of basketball. I’m grateful and honored to be a leader on a team filled with players who are honest with where they are at, are hungry and willing to grow, and are pursuing the right things as we continue on the journey of this season and life afterwards. 

I am excited you will get to hear from the other guys about how they are growing in these ways, and hope you will join us in our pursuit of hunger, habits and humility over the course of this season. 

-Jacob Johnson, Senior

Hunger, Habits, Humility

For IWUHoops, each season is a journey of men in the program trading the pursuit of me for the pursuit of 3.  Through intentional prayer, Bible study and community, God has continued to reveal new depths of an IAm3rd life.  

The 2016-2017 journey was one of a team filled with apathy learning to live a life marked by hunger, habits and humility.  Read Coach T's thoughts on this transformation HERE  

This offseason and preseason have seen IWUHoopers pursuing 'hunger, habits and humility.'   A pursuit of Hunger sets you in motion.  Habits keep you in motion.  Humility puts others in motion.  This pattern has taken some of the men in the program beyond mere growth and into transformation.  Over the next few weeks, we invite you to check back on the blog often to hear the stories of what the team is learning and who the players within the program are becoming.

Becoming A Hungry person

When I became a part of this program I really didn’t know why I was here or what was going to come of it. I can’t say I had a burning hunger to grow, but deep down, I knew I needed it.  I wanted to recapture that hunger that I had experienced at different times in my life.

It wasn’t until the Father/Son retreat when things started to click. The leaders on our team talked about each guy and what they had noticed in them through the first few weeks of school. It made me think about what people have noticed in me. What had I done that had motivated them or inspired them to work harder?  I began to really look at myself and the way I was living. I wasn’t doing anything wrong but there was another level I could go to if I was more intentional. Since the retreat, I’ve been growing in my hunger to change the people around me through how I am living.

During this season of growth, I am learning that I am wired to love people and I really do desire to have a positive impact on them. This hunger for others translates to my relationship with my girlfriend, family, friends, and teammates. As my focus has shifted off of myself, I have found myself pursuing God first and finding everything else falling into place.

I know I still have a lot of growth in order to accomplish big things, but I am finding more passion to do the little things that are necessary for the big things to happen.  Ultimately it is about pursuing God and finding his purpose for my life in order to grow the hunger he has put inside me.  As I continue to take one day at a time learning to live the IAm3rd life of God first and others second, I am moving forward with great hope and trust that He will take care of the rest. 

-Evan Maxwell, Junior

Hunger, Habits, Humility

For IWUHoops, each season is a journey of men in the program trading the pursuit of me for the pursuit of 3.  Through intentional prayer, Bible study and community, God has continued to reveal new depths of an IAm3rd life.  

The 2016-2017 journey was one of a team filled with apathy learning to live a life marked by hunger, habits and humility.  Read Coach T's thoughts on this transformation HERE  

This offseason and preseason have seen IWUHoopers pursuing 'hunger, habits and humility.'   A pursuit of Hunger sets you in motion.  Habits keep you in motion.  Humility puts others in motion.  This pattern has taken some of the men in the program beyond mere growth and into transformation.  Over the next few weeks, we invite you to check back on the blog often to hear the stories of what the team is learning and who the players within the program are becoming.

Becoming A Team With the right habits

This year our team has been studying how much our habits can influence our lives. Habits do not only control our routine, but they direct our thoughts, actions, feelings, and relationships.  The habits we form will determine the type of people we become.

The dictionary definition of a habit is “a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.” To me, this definition puts a negative connotation on the word habit. This definition focuses the word “habits” on the things we are doing. Our team has been exploring what it means to develop habits not only to determine the things we do, but developing habits to determine who we are becoming..  Habits don’t have to be be things that restrict us or pull us away from Christ, but instead give us freedom and allow us to become more like Him.

From personal experience, I have learned that our greatest failures are often the pathway to our greatest successes.  My growth in forming good habits comes because the poor habits I had early in my career almost led me out of the game completely.  You can read about that here.  While this was challenging period of my life, the struggle I went through was the way for me to experience the transformation this program desires to have.

Through these failures, here are a few things I have learned during my career here at IWU:

1.     Heavenly habits are intentional--We need to seek out what we want to become. If our pursuit of becoming is holy and pure, then in turn our habits will develop naturally. Our habits are often rooted in what we are hungry for. So, the more heavenly our hunger, the more heavenly our habits will become.

2.     Be steadfast--Times will come when you will have doubts, insecurities, or your hunger just isn’t there. The book of James tells us to “consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” We may drift toward doubts, questions, or even turning away from what is good at certain points in our life. We need to pursue these times with joy and seek truth because these are often the times we will grow the most.

3.     Accountability is key--Good habits are really hard to form on your own. If you’re trying to build habits by yourself, you are bound to fail. God uses other people for His purpose and we need to use that in order to grow. When the hunger dies down, we need someone there to encourage us and remind us why we are doing what we are doing.

4.     Humble habits produce fruit--I have seen to be true in my life over and over. God uses our habits and successes that comes from them to influence people in ways we cannot even imagine. Developing a habits to surrender to God will grow and spread because this habit almost always leaves us focused on others.

The growth in my life shows the power of being on a team.  On my worst days, I have a teammate who can show me the way, and hopefully on my best days, I am able to help them in return.  Learning this in the community we have on our team gives me a greater desire to find a church and accountability system when I leave IWU next year.  In the meantime, I am excited to see what each man in this program can become as we continue to develop great habits!

-Ben Carlson, Senior

Hunger, Habits, Humility

For IWUHoops, each season is a journey of men in the program trading the pursuit of me for the pursuit of 3.  Through intentional prayer, Bible study and community, God has continued to reveal new depths of an IAm3rd life.  

The 2016-2017 journey was one of a team filled with apathy learning to live a life marked by hunger, habits and humility.  Read Coach T's thoughts on this transformation HERE  

This offseason and preseason have seen IWUHoopers pursuing 'hunger, habits and humility.'   A pursuit of Hunger sets you in motion.  Habits keep you in motion.  Humility puts others in motion.  This pattern has taken some of the men in the program beyond mere growth and into transformation.  Over the next few weeks, we invite you to check back on the blog often to hear the stories of what the team is learning and who the players within the program are becoming.

Becoming A Person with the right habits

Developing good habits has never been a strength of mine.  If you talk to most of the coaches I have had in my career, they would say good habits are something I have really struggled with in the past.  I remember in high school, even when I would go in to the weight room, I would work to my comfort level.  As soon as I got uncomfortable, I would cut reps. 

Over the past few months, I have been becoming a person with good habits.  It all started with being called out by my teammates.  I was really struggling with cutting reps for the first several months when I got to IWU.  This led into June, and the day of my first junkyard workout.  It was the worst day of my life.  That workout was the hardest thing I have ever been through and my teammates wouldn’t let me quit. I left wondering if basketball was part of my future and if IWU was the right place for me.   

After talking things over with Coach T, I realized I needed to change my view on things.  I started to look at workouts from the view of the team and not just from a ME perspective.  I slowly started to change my habits…and I am actually starting to enjoy workouts!  This attitude is helping me off the court as well. By developing better habits, I am moving toward reaching my potential in basketball, and in life. 

-Sam McCracken, Redshirt Freshman

Hunger, Habits, Humility

For IWUHoops, each season is a journey of men in the program trading the pursuit of me for the pursuit of 3.  Through intentional prayer, Bible study and community, God has continued to reveal new depths of an IAm3rd life.  

The 2016-2017 journey was one of a team filled with apathy learning to live a life marked by hunger, habits and humility.  Read Coach T's thoughts on this transformation HERE  

This offseason and preseason have seen IWUHoopers pursuing 'hunger, habits and humility.'   A pursuit of Hunger sets you in motion.  Habits keep you in motion.  Humility puts others in motion.  This pattern has taken some of the men in the program beyond mere growth and into transformation.  Over the next few weeks, we invite you to check back on the blog often to hear the stories of what the team is learning and who the players within the program are becoming.

Becoming A Team With HUMILITY

We are becoming a team of men who are pursuing humility.  The problem is, it is not an easy word to understand. I am constantly asking myself: "how do hunger and habits tie in with humility?" Where is the connection?

I believe the connection lies within the IAm3 mindset.

At the core of our program is what we call the IAm3 mindset--we strive to put God first, others second, and ourselves third.

When we are developing habits, it is important to have an IAm3 attitude. Former player DJ Bettinger once told me that 40% of our every day actions are done out of habit. DJ was one of the hardest workers—and most humble teammates—I have ever known, so I naturally paid attention to what he had to say.  He proceeded to explain the importance of making the most of these habits. “If 40% of my day is going to consist of habitual actions, then I am going to try my hardest to develop habits that produce positive outcomes,” he said.

Essentially, DJ wants to have an IAm3 attitude 40% of the time... without even having to try.

Habits eventually create a hunger. But what are you hungry for? This question is so important to ask. Someone that is hungry for worldly things will pursue them, and we have found they will ultimately be dissatisfied. However, someone that hungers for the things of God will find spiritual fulfillment. Matthew 5:6 says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

We are also learning that hunger creates more habits. It is a cycle. The habits then create more hunger, which produce more habits, and so on. Once this cycle has been repeated various times, we desire to have humility set in.

The process of continually putting God first, others second, and yourself third is the key to developing humility. It is not a matter of unselfishness, but rather an intentional pursuit of making yourself smaller and God bigger. In other words, we desire to take the spotlight off of ourselves and put it on something greater.  This is when humility develops, and we can really reach our potential as a team. 

-Trevor Waite, Junior

Hunger, Habits, Humility

For IWUHoops, each season is a journey of men in the program trading the pursuit of me for the pursuit of 3.  Through intentional prayer, Bible study and community, God has continued to reveal new depths of an IAm3rd life.  

The 2016-2017 journey was one of a team filled with apathy learning to live a life marked by hunger, habits and humility.  Read Coach T's thoughts on this transformation HERE  

This offseason and preseason have seen IWUHoopers pursuing 'hunger, habits and humility.'   A pursuit of Hunger sets you in motion.  Habits keep you in motion.  Humility puts others in motion.  This pattern has taken some of the men in the program beyond mere growth and into transformation.  Over the next few weeks, we invite you to check back on the blog often to hear the stories of what the team is learning and who the players within the program are becoming.

Becoming A person of humility

Humility on the basketball court has always been one of the more difficult things for me to grasp.  

Being a humble ball player was tough because it is a competitive sport.  Personally, I hate losing more than I enjoy winning.  In order to win, I usually had to play a decent game.  It was hard for me to understand how I could want to win and also try to not be selfish and make the game about me.

My first two years at IWU, deep down I cared most about how many points I could score. I said I only wanted to win, but really a loss didn’t matter if I scored 20 that night. While I had some success doing that, it was not very fulfilling.

As I matured as a player, I realized that making others around me better was the difference maker. That is when humility really started to become a part of who I am.  As I continued into my senior year, there was a lot of pressure, but the pressure was self-inflicted. I began to shift my perspective of what basketball was to me. I can’t sing, dance, or play an instrument, but I could play basketball really well. I realized that my greatest form of worship was on the basketball court. Approaching the game in this way led to more personal success than ever, and we finished with the programs first ever national championship.

Growing up, the dreams of winning a national championship and being a professional basketball player were at the top of my list. As a result of the championship, I was presented with an opportunity to play professionally, allowing me to see both of these dreams fulfilled. To an outsider, getting paid to play a sport would have seemed like a dream come true. However, I quickly realized there wasn’t fulfillment in it that I had been expecting.  The game became about the individual again, and like my first few years at IWU, I wasn’t finding the joy and worship in the game that I had later in my career.

I came home from playing hungry to be surrounded by the IAm3 culture again. Here I am, back on the IWU coaching staff as the graduate assistant.  I am the lowest guy on the totem pole, making less money than I ever have.  Despite that, I have never been filled with so much joy and happiness. God used the emptiness of my professional career to show me that true joy and happiness won’t come from my own performance.  I had to become a person of humility, truly living out the IAm3 life.

I was very blessed throughout my four years of playing here to play have a lot of success with my teammates and coaches. But as I reflect on all those wins, championships, trophies, and awards… there is nothing more valuable than these lessons I have learned about humility and the IAm3 life! 

-Assistant Coach Jordan Weidner