Or Maybe I Just Don’t Want the Ball
"You gotta want the ball!" My high school basketball coach would scream it over and over. As the point guard I remember the frustration of playing with teammates who didn’t want the ball. They’d run through the three-second lane. I’d thread the ball over, under and around the tangle of defensive arms only to have it whack my teammates in the side of the head because they weren’t expecting my pass. In their heart of hearts, they preferred to avoid the ball.
These days I’m in the middle of a much more important endeavor. In my head, those basketballs flying through "the lane" turn into the souls which come bouncing through my life every day. Taking the good news about Jesus, the fearful news about God’s wrath and the sometimes uncomfortable news about how He wants us to change, to people who may not want to hear it, doesn’t come naturally to me. Maybe I just don’t want the ball.
Urgency and motivation are the keys to getting started. Before we can be about our Father’s business of saving lost souls, we need to be convinced daily that lost souls are all around us. We have to stop thinking of people as physical beings and begin to see them as spiritual creatures in a physical adventure.
If we profess to serve the Master who commands "go and teach," then we better want "the ball." But we may have the same fears as those teammates who used to frustrate me so much. If we pray for or seek opportunities, we might get one. If we seize it, the other team (Satan) will fight us for it. Someone might make a nasty remark. We could be tagged as weird. Someone might make us question the validity of what we’ve been teaching!
Yes, I know the excuses. You can see I’ve had much experience at putting off my Master’s task! But some days I get out from under all that clutter and go to work.
I have found that if I make evangelism a daily habit, those fears get smaller. After approaching many people, one at a time, negative experiences don’t seem so big. Also, if spreading the gospel is my occupation, over time it becomes more comfortable.
It seems I usually hear of other people’s extreme experiences (either good or bad) with teaching the lost. Their negative stories are discouraging and their extremely positive ones cause us to expect too much. In reality, most experiences with evangelism are not monumental. Our goal is simply to plant a seed and see how far we can nurture it. That’s all.
Today…want the ball. Plant seeds. You may question your ability: Plant anyway. You may have only a few minutes: Plant anyway. You may not be sure of the soil: Plant anyway. Plant many. That’s what Christians do for a living—a spiritual living.