Taking My Ball...

Pick-up games at neighborhood basketball courts and sandlots are familiar scenes in the world of sports. And whether you’ve played in these games or watched them, you’ve probably noticed that there’s usually one kid who gets mad, takes his or her ball and goes home. He thought he was safe. She thought she was fouled. Things weren’t going in their favor so they just didn’t want to play anymore. Sound familiar? It should. We do it all the time…with God.

We pray, and God doesn’t answer like we wanted, so we decide not to pray anymore. We get injured playing our sport, and we think God isn’t looking out for us, so we don’t read the Bible anymore. Teammates said hurtful things about us, so we don’t go to church anymore.

In these cases and others like them, we end up trying to handle things by ourselves. We wind up feeling alone. And we take our ball and go home.

Doing life with Jesus doesn’t mean the end of problems. It means the end of facing problems alone. When Jesus is on our team it doesn’t mean the absence of pain, but the presence of peace. Jesus said in John 16:33, “I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world.”