Believe

Happy Monday! I'm posting at Exemplify Online today. You can read the rest of my devotion there.


She’s 17 years old, blonde and adorable. But beneath her girl-next-door exterior lives a determined fighter who wields her weapon with finesse and power. In a manner reminiscent of David and Goliath this virtual unknown slayed giant after giant during the last two weeks.

Her name? Melanie Oudin. Her weapon? A Wilson K Blade Tour racket. The arena? Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing, NY. If you haven’t heard of her…you will.

This fresh-faced young American said her goal during the summer was to play well enough to rank in the top 100 so she wouldn’t have to qualify as a wild card for the US Open. By tournament time she ranked 67. Yet even with that impressive accomplishment, it still left her a loooong way from the rarefied air of the seeded players. A peon in the locker room.

By the second match it seemed Melanie’s US Open dreams were about to end as she faced the fourth seeded player. Just like King Saul said to puny David, logic/statistics/experience/common sense told Melanie, “You are not able to go out against these top players and fight them; you are only a girl, and they have been winning majors from their youth.” (ref.1 Samuel 17:33)


But you know what? She didn’t listen to any of that. And she won. And then she won again and again and again. Four top-seeded players dismantled and sent home.
How did she do it? Training and hard work to be sure, but tennis is too mental a game for that to be enough. Instead she lived the motto on her signature yellow and pink sneakers: Believe. “For me, it’s all about that. It’s believing that I can beat these girls and hang there with them,” she said. “If I didn’t have that, then there's no way I would have been able to win (here).”

So often in our Christian journey, we feel like David in a sea of Goliaths. We look around and feel we don’t measure up. Our giants have more experience, more power, more eloquence and more Bible knowledge. They pray better, sing better, lead better and write better.

We may feel a divine nudge or hear a small voice, but we allow logic, experience or common sense to tell us we can’t—or shouldn’t.

The apostle Paul coaches the Ephesians against such a mindset, “I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead…” (1:19-20a NLT, emphasis mine)

You and I may never play in a professional sports tournament, incite a media frenzy or become a household name, but we can rise to the extraordinary. The key to our success lies not in our own hard work, expert training or fine pedigree, but in our belief of the very One who raised Jesus from the grave. Paul says this incomparable power is available for all who believe God at His word. Imagine that?! This concept is so foreign to our nature it’s tough to grasp, but when we do, we can be assured victories beyond our wildest dreams—with consequences that far outlast any silver trophy.

We can also be assured that when God calls us to the playing field, He will equip us with what all we need. In my case, I hope that includes a cute pair of yellow and pink tennis sneakers.

To Believe or Not to Believe?

Thank you all of you who commented and emailed me yesterday. It was nice to "meet" some of you for the first time and hear from friends I didn't know were reading.

Yesterday I touched on the responsibility I, and really all of us, have as Christians to use the gifts God has given us to honor Him and point others to Jesus.

To that end I wanted to share something based on a book I read the other day.

Many people believe Jesus was either a great teacher or wise prophet but they can’t accept He is the Son of God. They think Christians are out of their minds and that no thinking person could see things otherwise. They poke holes in the Christian faith and argue against it. Bystanders follow the vocal minority and discard or discredit Christianity as myth or fallacy without ever investigating its message. This describes my point of view for many, many years.

Josh McDowell was also such a person—until he accepted a challenge to rigorously and intellectually examine the claims of Jesus. And he found his supposedly well-formed arguments didn’t hold up. His quest resulted in the book, More than a Carpenter. Here’s an excerpt:

Jesus claimed to be God, and to him it was of fundamental importance that men and women believed him to be who he was. Either we believe him or we don’t. He didn’t leave any wiggle room for in-between, watered-down alternatives. One who claimed what Jesus claimed about himself couldn’t be a good moral man or prophet. That option isn’t open to us, and Jesus never intended it to be.”

As C.S. Lewis, a former agnostic, wrote in Mere Christianity, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.”

“You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon, or you can fall at His fee and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He as not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Lord, liar or lunatic? Jesus didn’t leave us any choice.

Are you skeptical about the claims of Jesus? Do you accept Him, but still have doubts? Or would you like to be able to concretely explain why you have the hope in Jesus you do? Check out More than a Carpenter, The Case for Faith or an Alpha course near you.