DISCIPLES OF OPTIMISM

2 Chronicles 19:1-20:37; Romans 10:14-11:12; Psalm 21:1-13; Proverbs 20:4-61

“Always think carefully before pronouncing judgment. Remember that you do not judge to please people but to please the Lord…. Listen to me, all you people…! Believe in the Lord your God, and you will be able to stand firm. Believe in his prophets, and you will succeed.”

“But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them? And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent? That is why the Scriptures say, ‘How beautiful are the feet of messengers who bring good news!’”

“Rise up, O Lord, in all your power. With music and singing we celebrate your mighty act!”

“Many will say they are loyal friends, but who can find one who is truly reliable?”

There is a great deal I remember from my forgettable athletic career, but no memory is as ironic as that of my sophomore year in high school. Beyond my batting .333 (pretty good, until one understands it represented only 1 hit out of a total of 3 at bats), the greatest irony concerned one of the most admirable seniors on the team who had battled for a starting position all year. He finally got his chance about mid-season. Starting in right field, he played fine but was not tested until the bottom of the ninth. Facing two outs and two runs down, John stepped to the plate with the bases loaded and took the first pitch to deep left center, off the fence. By the time the center fielder corralled the ball and got it to the infield, John was on third, the bases were otherwise cleared, and victory was ours. Then, for the rest of the season, John rode the bench. He never played another out, never saw another pitch. Some reward. While John maintained the stiff upper lip and great sportsmanship for which the entire team had come to respect him, I came to really disrespect our coach. Not only was what he had done completely unfair to John; he had taken away whatever hope the rest of us benchers had of ever getting into a game. It would have been nearly impossible not to judge him. This story does not have a happy ending, either. Coach never explained himself. We did not make the playoffs. John’s heroics were wasted. BLAH!

What does a person do with a story like that? There is no way to pretty up the sad truth sometimes. Fairness and justice are in short supply on this earth, and there’s just no getting around that fact. The good guys do not always win; oft as not, in fact, they get the short end of the stick. “Nice” tends to get taken advantage of and left behind. How are we supposed to be able to avoid judging others in the face of clear wrongdoing or injustice? In God’s eyes, the answer is fairly simple: quit placing so much faith in people in the first place. This does not mean to quit trusting altogether, nor does it encourage cold-hearted cynicism. The Holy Spirit, if we allow it, will simply lead us to the inevitable conclusion that our whole faith and trust needs a more worthy repository than another human being. Faith should not rest solely in other individuals. It should rest in Christ. Only Christ has the power to elevate humiliation into true victory. Only Jesus could turn a lost battle into a won war.

The work of the Cross and the Resurrection give Christians their hope. Earthly accomplishments – or the lack of them – mean little when those who follow Christ will survive even death! What are a few innings on the bench of life compared to that? Not much…, unless we have never heard and accepted the Good News of Christ. Absent the Gospel, every setback becomes potentially catastrophic. If we have no hope of eternal life, then death really is the end, and our chances for redemption actually come few and far between.

This is why discipleship and evangelism are so important: people without hope generally are unaware there is an alternative. Maybe they’ve forgotten in the emotion of the moment that the Son is longing to lift them up and turn their shortcomings into opportunities for ministry. Maybe they never knew they have a Savior who is fully capable of overcoming even their specific world. Or maybe optimism just seemed like too much work, being so illogical in a world where pessimism and the powers of darkness rule. In any event, Christians are called out by their God to go and make disciples of everyone, especially those who have no hope, whatever the reason for their shortsightedness.

As we face the opportunities of discipleship, let’s keep one idea uppermost in our minds. There is no excuse for a pessimistic Christian! Several weeks ago, I caught myself totally focused on the loss and pain in the world. Disappointment in our leaders and those who took such blatant advantage of a mismanaged system to put the entire world in peril really dragged down my spiritual health. My whole outlook began to dry out. I lost sight of hope and found myself becoming cactus-like, hoarding what little positive I could find within myself and becoming all prickly, spiny and untouchable on the outside. But then, Christ spoke and challenged me once more to trust Him. (In my wallowing, I had totally neglected to do that – my bad!) Suddenly, the world did not look quite so dark. Hope remained. Power was available to over come the world. I just had to refocus.

The results have been nothing short of astonishing. The future looks much brighter. Anxiety, which had once more begun to raise its ugly head, was calmed and crawled back into its hole. Opportunities to build up others became more obvious, and my willingness to give of myself to make positive things happen came much more easily. I became convicted, big time. In the final analysis, there are only two ways to live life: hopeful, and hopeless. I want to be hopeful.

Even while he was sitting on the bench an ignored victim of injustice, John presented a positive witness to the rest of us benchers. He showed us that life, personal worth and self-image do not begin or end with baseball. We have the right and ability to choose our God. We need to put our faith in Jesus above all others. And we need to share His Good News with the world. Christ, after all, is the only hope of resurrection, recreation, forgiveness and redemption any of us have. It would be a shame if anyone lost hope just because we had not shared our Hope with them. We are called to be friends of the world by bringing the world the Light of Christ. We never need to feel sorry for ourselves, and we should not allow ourselves to do so. If Christ has entrusted His Good News to us, we have both a purpose and a reward to look forward to that makes all of this other stuff in the interim look pretty darn insignificant by comparison.