Lessons from Candy Crush Saga

Like thousands of other people, I have recently become addicted to Candy Crush Saga. The premise of Candy Crush Saga is simple, you match pieces of candy on a grid to score points. As the levels increase, the difficulty increases. Most recently I have struggled to get past one level, failing time after time. This all got me thinking of how we can learn many lessons from this simple game in relation to our life and days on earth.

1. You only have so much life - use it wisely
In Candy Crush a person has a limited number of lives and each life must be used wisely. If these lives are wasted, a person must wait a given amount of time before receiving another life. This applies to our earthly life as well. We each only have one life to live and thus we should use our life wisely - to accomplish the purpose that we have been created for and to spend our time on the priorities that matter. 

2. Don't take the move that seems obvious and "feels right"
In Candy Crush there are a wide variety of moves that are available at any given time. Making the wrong move is irreversible and could cost you the entire game (a life). Therefore, it is often required to look over the entire board to look for available moves, to consider how a particular move might affect the future of your game. This is true in life as well. We are often faced with situations and decisions that need to be made. We should not take the first and most immediate choice available, instead we should stop and consider how this decision will affect our life and our future. 

3. Friends and family are necessary to our success
In Candy Crush you can ask friends and family members for additional lives, additional moves, and additional tickets to help you proceed throughout he various levels of the game. What is more, you can ask friends and family members for tips and tricks to help with particular levels that you find yourself stuck on. The same is true in life. A solid and dependable foundation of friends and family members - people that we know love us and will support us - are required. Friends and family members bring us inspiration and encouragement at our times of deepest need and desperation. Friends and family members can speak truth and life into us when we think we can't go any farther. 

4. A faithful "higher power" is a necessity
In Candy Crush pieces are dropped from the top of the game board, with little to no knowledge of what pieces might be coming next. (I often complain to my wife that the "man upstairs" is failing to drop the pieces I need). In each one of our lives we need help from The Almighty God, who cares for us, sustains us, and gives us everything that we need to carry on and to find victory in this life. 

A Game and Worship

Last week Kim and I thought it might be nice to take the kids to a basketball game at the local junior college. We looked at the schedule and determined that we would go to the women's basketball game and then possibly stay for the men's game depending on how the kids were.Our biggest fear was that if the kids acted up, we would have to leave.

Shortly after the game began we realized that it was going to be a long forty minutes. Not because of the way the kids were behaving but because of the way the team was playing. These girls seemed to either just be standing around as if their feet were stuck in concrete or they were running around wildly with no apparent play call or design. It was the worst game I have ever sat through and I have been to many sixth and seventh grade basketball games. The girls would stand on one side of the court, have the ball stolen from them run to the other end of the court and seem winded from the light jog, we watched as one girl bent down to tie her shoe in the middle of a play. It was comedic!

There had to be less than 50 fans that came out to watch this junior college match-up, many of whom were parents of the students and yet, for the longest time, there was no excitement or passion in the crowd, nothing really to cheer about. As we watched the coach of the team it was apparent why the girls were losing, and why this lack of passion existed. Not once did we see this coach get excited, not once did she call out a play, not once did she call a timeout to readjust or give rest to her players, not once did she offer any real coaching to the game. This lack of coaching, lack of passion and commitment on her part passed directly on to the girls that were playing the game, and this lack of passion on the court passed directly on to the crowd in the stands.

All this got me to thinking about worship in many churches today. The passion and commitment to worship is the most important thing. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING! We have a great reason to worship the Creator of the universe, we have the ability to worship, and yet what seems to be lacking in many churches this passion, a fire, an excitement in the area of worship. And it is important that this passion begin with our church leaders, that the visible leaders exude this excitement, or else the worship of the body may die off.

Near the end of the game, when they were down by 45 points, some of the parents had finally had enough and they started talking. One father stood on the opposite side of the court and began to call out plays and coach the girls. He turned at one point and said "someone has to".


This concept too applies to worship. If our leaders in the church do not embrace the opportunity to worship with a drive and a passion than "someone has to". Perhaps that someone needs to be you.

WORSHIP IS IMPORTANT! Never lose hold of this truth. Worship is important. Never lose the passion for it.