All-Star Failure

Opening Day is here in the Majors. America's favorite past-time. Now, I am not an avid baseball fan. At least not from May to August. I enjoy a few months of the sport. Especially the Opening Day Series in April and the World Series in October. And so, with the beginning of The 2016 Opening Series between the New York Mets and the Kansas City Royals (a rematch from the World Series of 2015), I want to encourage you with one of the most unique facts in all of sports.

A Major League baseball player can strike-out, ground-out, and fly-out 70% of the time and he can still be an all-star! Amazing isn’t it? The best baseball players in the world will only get on base 30% of the time. They will only be successful 30% of their career. Yet, they could be considered one of the all-time greats in the sport. With that in mind, I wonder what kind of pressure we place on ourselves when it comes to our walk with God?

Psalm 103 defines the way God sees our relationship with Him. He uses phrases like ‘forgives all your iniquities’, ‘crowns you with mercies’, ‘redeems your life’, ‘abounding in loving-kindness’, and ‘He has removed our transgressions’. To read Psalm 103 really takes the pressure off of me having to perform. I don’t need to impress God or produce. He loves me just as I am and that releases me to trust that His steadfast love is new every morning and His mercies do not cease. Paul said in Ephesians 2.8 that "It is by grace that we are saved, not of ourselves; but it is the gift of God." We cannot earn it.

All of us must rely on grace much more than we do. It is the central theme of Christian theology. So, step up to the plate, grip the bat, trust your training. I bet you could succeed more than 30% of the time in life. And, if for some reason you don’t, you will learn that you are still a winner in God’s eye!