VillagePastor

One Small Step

I'm just returning from a summit of sorts in Dallas, where a number of ministry leaders from the Mideast met together. We came to discuss ways we can partner to impact regions like Lebanon and beyond for the cause of Christ. It is both impressive and encouraging to see the caliber of men and women God is bringing together.

We came to dream large and pray big and strategize powerfully—but we realized it all begins with small steps, little decisions to do the will of God. The good news is that in a region that seems so desperate and chaotic and easy to write off, there is this growing conviction that after years of praying and seeing little fruit, God is beginning to move throughout the place, from Algeria to Iran. Shiites and Sunnis and Druze are finding dead ends in their own faiths, and finding the grace and hope they have been looking for in Jesus. God is revealing Himself in amazing dreams to unbelievers, creating events that are giving the church the opportunity to show the compassion of Christ. Hence, it is imperative the church of Jesus is mobilized to minister to responsive hearts. 

 

Still, it seems pretty overwhelming. There are huge obstacles—threats of terror, instability, seething hatreds, desperate people, religions that give legitimacy to acts of great evil. But in these days, there are a couple of things that urge us forward. First is the knowledge that we serve a God who has put all things under His feet (I Cor 15). He has both conquered death and raised us to new life. We have been given His power to stand in this tension of the already and not yet, the Kingdom of God that is present, and yet future. And hence, there is something of God’s future reign that steps into the present when we call on Him. For this is the essence of prayer—prayer that cries out—Thy kingdom come! It is prayer that is unwilling to accept the world as it is. Prayer that is so formidable that there is an in-breaking of God’s future rule into the present, such that we who bear His name become “advance signs” of God’s eventual new world in the here and now. This is what is happening—and must happen in the Mideast.

 
The second thing that encourages our hearts are the stories of consummate risk-takers, those that have gone before us. In a book I just finished, Water from a Deep Well by Gerald Sittser (well worth spending a lot of time in), the author has a compelling chapter about risk-takers. One of my favorite stories is one told of David Brainard, a man who risked everything (“I want to wear out my life in his service”), and devoted his life to praying for the nations. Jonathan Edwards was to be his future father in law, but Brainard died before the marriage could take place. Nonetheless, Brainard lived on, for Edwards was so moved by this young man’s example, that he wrote a brief biography of his life. And these words moved across the ocean, setting in motion the modern missionary movement and inspiring the likes of William Carey. They moved a Jim Elliot to go out and risk his life and impact his world, facing obstacles every bit as big as ones today.

 

Still, is seems so overwhelming. But Sittser’s closing words help a lot—“They each lived the story, day after day, year after year, not knowing how it would all turn out. Their work progressed slowly and unpredictably and mysteriously. They made little decisions every day to do the will of God as they knew it; they took little risks—as well as a few big ones—that set them on a course leading to adventure, achievement, and influence; they chose to devote their time, talent and energy to God, refusing to put limits on what God would do with them.” It all begins with one small step.

 

 

LIVING WITHOUT DISTRACTION

Yesterday I was having lunch with a former pastor from our church, and we were having one of those great talks. He is a focused man. He has to be. He is living in one of the most difficult regions on earth (North Africa), learning to master French, all with the aim of reaching a very unreached people for Christ (living next to Libya, where by some accounts there are only 6 believers in the country!). But I couldn’t help but become distracted by a cell phone call at the table next to us, that began with one of those annoying, high volume rings (why is it people must turn their phones up, playing the most maddening music, as if to announce to the world, “I am receiving an incoming call”?). Such distractions are the curse of our age.

 

Which brings me to a great, great article I was reading this week out of the NY Times by David Brooks. He is such a good writer. Brooks was reflecting on what makes for great pitching—after all, it was opening day. And he shared some amazing insights by a sports psychologist by the name of Dorfman, who has studied great pitching. And it all goes back to this issue of distraction.

 

Dorfman makes the point that great athletes have this in common—focus, self-discipline, structure. They are not distracted. In his research, Dorfman has found that it takes 10,000 hours of undistracted practice to master any craft—three hours of practice every day for 10 years. It reminds me of a time I was hitting with a tennis pro in Chennai, India, and he was telling me about Pete Sampras’ routine.  Sampras used to come and compete in Chennai, and his regimen was to hit for four hours against two teams of two guys, who would rotate in and out every 15 minutes. After lunch, Sampras would work out with weights for another two hours, then back on the court to serve for another two. (And I thought my routine of playing 3-4 times a week was impressive).

 

Back to pitching, Dorfman says a pitcher who has mastered his craft must bring a relentlessly assertive mind-set to the mound. He must plan on attacking the strike zone early in the count. He will not throw around hitters. He invites contact. This is because a great pitcher thinks about three things, and only three things: pitch selection, pitch location, and the catcher’s glove. If he is thinking about anything else, he should step off the rubber. Everything else is extraneous. In fact, in a pitcher’s mind, the batter barely exists. Listen to how Dorfman describes the batter—“he is a vague, generic abstraction, that hovers out there in the land beyond the pitcher’s control. A pitcher shouldn’t judge himself by how the batter hits his pitches, but instead by whether he threw the pitch he wanted to throw.”

 

He once had a conversation with Greg Maddux after a game and asked how it went. Maddux’s reply, like his pitching, was concise and focused: “Fifty out of seventy-three”

He had thrown 73 pitches and executed 50. Nothing else was relevant.

 

If you’re like me, you’re starting to say to yourself—there’s a lot of life application here. In my world, as a preacher, I have to constantly tell myself when I am on “the mound”  that I should not judge myself by how the congregants respond to what I am saying, but instead by whether I have said what God has called me to say. Nothing else really matters. But easily, I (we?) get distracted by “the batters” in life, when our focus should stay in the strike zone. For us who are about something far greater than pitching stats—advancing God’s kingdom—should we not have even greater focus in what God has called us to? I wonder if the apostle Paul was in effect saying the same thing when he said to the Philippians, “I have not reached the goal, nor am I already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus…one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead…I pursue the prize” (Phil 3:12-14).