“Until I did not need to win it, I could not play to win it.” Those were Madison Keys’ striking words after winning this year’s Australian Open, her first Grand Slam.

To suggest Madison Keys was a tennis prodigy is an understatement. According to her account, people started telling her she was destined to win a tennis Grand Slam when she was eleven. She became a professional tennis player on her fourteenth birthday in 2009 and was the youngest player to win a Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) tour match.

In a World Team Tennis event, competing for the Philadelphia Freedom, still only fourteen years of age, Keys beat the greatest women’s tennis player of all time, world number two at the time, Serena Williams, in a short set to five games (5-1), Madison’s professional tennis career traveled a steadily ascending path after turning professional, and by the time she was eighteen years old, she was ranked in the top fifty in the world.

Over the years, she became one of the most consistent players on the WTA tour, and in 2016, she rose to world number seven. However, though she was consistent, she developed an unfortunate label. Madison was often described as the best women’s tennis player who had never won a Grand Slam.

In 2017, Keys reached the US Open final, her home Grand Slam. Her opponent was her good friend and fellow American, Sloane Stephens. The result was devastating: Keys lost 6-3, 6-0, in a match that was never competitive. She played tight and nervous throughout the match. After the match, Madison visibly appeared broken.   

What happened? She felt like winning a Grand Slam was the only way to validate her career. Keys entered the match under the shadow of everyone’s expectations since she was eleven years old. By her admission, after the loss, she was riddled with self-doubts. Will I ever do it? If I never do it, will my career be a failure?

Pursuing a Grand Slam championship had become what she now describes as a “heavy burden” she carried on her back, which had come to “define her.”

As Keys entered this year’s Australian Open, it was the twenty-nine-year-old’s 46^th Grand Slam appearance. Her path to the final championship match was one of the most daunting I have ever seen as she beat the world number 10, 6, 28, and 2 to get to the final, where she faced the world number 1, Aryna Sabalenka, who had won the previous two Australian Opens. At the end of a tight match, where both played well, Madison Keys, sixteen years after turning pro, lifted a Grand Slam trophy.

What happened? It was the first time she had competed in a Grand Slam where she did not feel like she had to win the championship to validate herself and her career. She had come to understand that she was not defined by a Grand Slam trophy and living up to the expectations of others. She said, “Until I did not need to win it, I could not play to win it.” Not until she did not need to win a Grand Slam could she play with the freedom and courage necessary to compete effectively for a Grand Slam title.

After counseling people for almost thirty years, I can assure you that the debilitating problem of performance-based living and being controlled by other people’s expectations is not limited to the realm of elite athletes. Like Keys with tennis, many Christians struggle with a fearful performance-based approach to Christian living.  It is the root problem of most people I’ve tried encouraging to walk more faithfully with Christ.

Explaining their problem, people often refer to something that is beyond their control or something that is not the way they would like it to be. They tend to say things like:

• My life is not what I thought it would be.
• My marriage should not be so difficult.
• I should have already achieved _________.
• All I want is ________.·  Everybody expects me to _________.

I usually ask them if God promised them the thing they mentioned. The answer is almost always no. Often, we are upset with God for not doing something he never promised. An unhealthy desire for control and an idolatrous longing that we have to have something God has not promised results in debilitating bondage.

After his defense of the biblical Gospel in Galatians, Paul declares, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (5:1). The one who has put their faith in Jesus is justified, granted a new eternal identity in Christ. From that point forward, sanctification is applying the reality of justification to our daily lives (“stand firm therefore” Gal. 5:1).

What we have to have, we have—Christ!

Followers of Christ live in light of his truth and promises, gladly acknowledging that there is much in life over which we have little or no control. We trust in the one who does have control over all things. Freedom is found in not being defined by our temporal actions, achievements, reputation, or status because the believer already has what matters, ultimately and eternally.

Only when we do not ask too much of the things of this world will we be free to enjoy them and properly give ourselves to them. Madison Keys said she kept telling herself in the Australian Open championship final, “Be brave!” She knew she would feel good about the final match, win or lose, if she played bravely.

Christian, be brave! Whether you win or lose now, knowing, in Christ, you are free, and you’ve already won.