Victory in Jesus: Trusting the Guide, Ignoring the Wrong Scoreboard
What can an escape room competition teach us about the Christian life? As it turns out, quite a lot. During a recent pastors’ retreat, Pastor Mike and his team competed in a breakout challenge — teams of three or four, two hours on the clock, racing through physical, mental, and skill-based rooms to accumulate points. The lessons that emerged from that afternoon map directly onto three of the most urgent questions every believer faces: How do I navigate the unknown? Which scoreboard actually matters? And how do I keep going when the game gets hard?
Walking Into the Unknown
One room at the retreat involved a screen with a number that kept changing. The team was scoring 20 to 30 points but couldn’t figure out why they weren’t maxing out. The secret turned out to be patience — the number changed one final time after it appeared to stop, and nearly every team missed it because they didn’t wait long enough.
Life works the same way. We walk into trials, transitions, and seasons of confusion without a clear map. We know something matters, but we can’t see why yet. That is precisely where we need more than experience — we need a Guide who knows the Maker. Jesus promised exactly that Guide. “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). The Holy Spirit does not operate on autopilot in the believer’s life. This relationship is cultivated through prayer, through intentional time spent listening, and through the kind of dependence that treats God as the source of understanding rather than a last resort. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 2:10-12, the Spirit searches the deep things of God and makes them known to those who belong to Him.
The Scoreboard Problem
The retreat venue had multiple scoreboards posted — all-time highs, current session standings, other teams’ scores. To know where you stood, you had to know everyone’s name and keep tracking constantly. It was easy to get disoriented.
Life offers the same overwhelming number of scoreboards. There are financial scoreboards, career scoreboards, health and fitness scoreboards, and cultural scoreboards that measure suffering and adversity. Even within the church, we can construct religious scoreboards — souls led to Christ, days of devotion, prayers logged, sacrifices tallied. Paul had the most impressive religious scoreboard of his generation, and he called it rubbish compared to knowing Christ (Philippians 3:5-8).
The scoreboards that actually count are three that Paul lays out in Philippians 3:9-21. Justification — receiving Christ’s righteousness, not your own. Sanctification — responding to Christ’s upward call and pressing toward maturity. Glorification — being received into Christ’s presence at the end. Every other scoreboard is temporary. These three are eternal.
How We Won: Perseverance and the Wisdom of Solomon
Pastor Mike’s team was not the youngest group at the retreat. They were not the most athletic. They did not have an obvious competitive edge. And yet they won. The reason was not cleverness or raw talent. It was perseverance and the wisdom to know when to move on.
Solomon observed this long ago: “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge” (Ecclesiastes 9:11). Winning in the long run belongs to those who endure. James 1:12 promises blessing to the one who remains steadfast under trial.
One of the rooms at the venue was a Lego tower challenge — the kind of task designed to consume your time and energy without a proportionate return. Some challenges in life are the same way. Two kinds of wisdom are needed: knowing how to engage a challenge, and knowing when to leave it behind. The team that won did not argue over past mistakes. They did not carry failure or success from one room into the next. They moved forward, fully focused, united in purpose.
We often assume the height of the Christian life is enduring every temptation without stumbling or navigating every moral dilemma with perfect precision. But Solomon’s conclusion after examining every scoreboard life has to offer was simpler and more durable: “Fear God and keep his commandments — this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13). The height of Christianity is not flawless performance. It is fidelity to Christ.
That means resilience matters more than perfection (2 Corinthians 4:7-9). Imperfect obedience that keeps moving matters more than perfect knowledge that stays frozen (Jeremiah 18:5-8). And love — the mercy that is new every morning — wins over shame every time (Lamentations 3:22-23; Hebrews 12:1-2).
Press On
Victory in Jesus is not found by outperforming the world on its own scoreboards. It is not found in our best moments of spiritual discipline or moral achievement. It is found in staying faithful — trusting the Holy Spirit as Guide, moving forward to the next challenge without dragging the last room with you, and pressing on in love toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13-14). The clock started when you walked in. Keep moving forward.