Why I Carry My Sword!
God’s timing is always perfect. I have been carrying my Sword while coaching since 2013 with only occasional questions of why I do so. Last March God took our team on another special March journey all the way to the NAIA National Championship Game. A young man by the name of Noah Smith posted a video clip on TikTok mentioning that I carried my Bible while coaching. I actually don’t have TikTok, but a few people contacted me at that time mentioning they had saw the post.
For reasons only God knows, the past couple days the post has taken off on TikTok with near 60k viewers taking notice. I only know because my players text me mentioning the post trending viral.
As a result, I felt led to explain the reason why I still Coach with my Sword to this day.
In 2009 God took our team on a miraculous journey at OKWU. It ended with what most thought was an impossible National Championship, it was a miraculous journey as God had given me a program in 2007 that had struggled mightily and had never even made a NAIA National Tournament appearance. Two years later we had won a NAIA D2 record 39 consecutive games on our way to an impossible Dream Season. As I mentioned, that winning streak continued on to 39 games into the 2009-10 season. My father, David Bostwick, had gotten to enjoy the journey with me. It was a dream come true as taking the OKWU job allowed him to see most of my games.
After winning the record 39th consecutive game, I walked up to my dad smiling. He said, “Son I need to tell you something. I am passing blood.” My dad was a Clint Eastwood tough-guy type who had a tough upbringing. He rarely if ever went to the doctor.
We went to the ER where we found out that dad only had one kidney his entire life and it had cancer. God gave me exactly one additional year with my father, which gave me a deep hate for cancer. A year later, My dad won his greatest victory on the day I took my team to the 2010 NAIA Championship. He told me to be strong and courageous, then went to heaven. I left the hospital to pick up my team to go to the tournament.
Three Years later, I had taken over another program who had struggled, SAGU. Our 2012-13 season was off to a rough start, I had just found out that one of my top players was not going to be able to play the rest of the season. I grabbed my Bible, very frustrated, and headed to our school chapel service. I don’t even remember what was spoken about in chapel that day as I sat near the back frustrated, when the service was over, my 30 year old Pastor named David and his wife Joy stepped to the stage He also served as SAGU IT Director to help pay for his church plant. David announced that he thought he had hurt his shoulder playing intramural basketball, but he had just found out it was stage 4 bone cancer. That hit me harder than I can even explain. I said why God!
He said “fight. I said “I will”. I had been studying David and his mighty men and focusing on Eleazar who had chosen not to retreat, but instead stood and fought alone defeating the entire enemy force by himself winning a mighty victory. When his force returned to find him, they found Eleazar’s sword frozen in his hand and the enemy all defeated. The Holy Spirit had taken over, fought, and won the battle for Eleazar!
I felt God was telling me to stand with David hold my Sword and fight like Eleazar.
I walked up to the stage after the service and told David and Joy what God had told me. This began a fierce journey full of attacks and miracles over the next 5 months. We lost the first game carrying my Bible by over 30 pts, it honestly felt like the movie Space Jam. It seemed like a spiritual battle more than a game as my players couldn’t do anything. After the game I remember walking into the locker room looking at a defeated group of young men. I told them that I was gonna keep carrying my Bible and start raising funds for my friend. In that moment everything seemed to change in the locker room. I can’t even explain it, but it was like they looked at me as though saying, “We have your back coach. Do what God says. We went on to win our next 17 games in a row. Sitting at my desk prior to our conference championship game, I got a text from David. We had raised over 10K to help David have a stem cell transplant. The text read “NED”. I had no clue what NED meant, so I texted back “?” His response, “NO EVIDENCE OF DISEASE”! Miraculously we kept winning all the way to the 2013 National Championship Game where ESPN did a special honoring David. David and Joy were blessed with an entire Spring and Summer to enjoy life together, before cancer returned. We continued to fight and on the day our team returned to the NAIA Tournament, David won his ultimate victory entering the arms of Jesus!
Since then God has taken our teams to Africa, Asia, and all over the world using Basketball to Spread the Good News!
I will continue to carry my Sword in games to remember both my Father David and my Pastor David. Father God has been beyond faithful both on and off the court in my life. We have taken teams to Africa, Asia, Central America, Alaska, and from coast to coast using God’s gifts to spread the Good News!
This is a video made before we left for the 2013-14 National Tournament!