The 2011 Major League Baseball World Series was one to remember. As a lifelong St. Louis Cardinals fan watching them win the 11th championship in franchise history was a sweet, exhilarating experience. The Cardinals finished on top at the end of a season when no one, myself included, expected them to. Oh we of little faith!
While there is a lesson about never giving up in the Cardinals’ improbable run to the World Series, there is another one for our spiritual lives from the losing team.
Texas Rangers’ outfielder Josh Hamilton is known to be a committed Christian and credits God for turning around his life and career. He blasted a huge home run in the 10th inning of Game 6 to put his team ahead by two runs. But his home run heroics are only half the story.
After the game, Hamilton explained to the press that God told him he was going to hit a home run in the at bat. “He told me, ‘You haven’t hit one in awhile, and this is the time you’re going to,’” he said. And he did on the first pitch. For the briefest of moments it looked like the home run from God would win the game – and the Series – for his team in what would have been an inspiring cap to his comeback.
But it was not to be. David Freese, the Cardinals’ third baseman belted a home run of his own in the 11th inning to win Game 6 and force a Game 7 which the Cardinals would win the next night easily. It was a wonderful end for the Cards, not so wonderful for Hamilton and his Rangers. Imagine his heartbreak as the zenith of Major League Baseball sailed into the night on a long ball to straightaway center field.
What about his message from God? “There was a period at the end of [the sentence],” Hamilton said. “He didn’t say, ‘You’re going to hit it and you’re going to win.’” This is why the phrase “God moves in mysterious ways,” is a cliche. Did God set Hamilton up for disappointment?
This curve ball in the at bat of our faith happens to all of us eventually. It happens because we take a limited amount of information God has revealed and extrapolate it to a meaning He has not.
Why would we hold God to something He has not promised? One reason is our natural tendency to hear what we want to hear. Jesus promised that his yoke is easy and his burden is light (Matthew 11:30) and we hear our life will be easier. Proverbs reminds us that godly and healthy habits are best developed early (“train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it,” Proverbs 22:6) and we hear that our children will never reject the Lord because they were raised in the church. The list goes on.
There is a deeper reason, too. The central struggle of the spiritual walk with God is learning to surrender to His will and to abdicate our own. We struggle with God’s mysterious ways because they are so different from what we think is the ideal. Even Jesus longed for a more ideal resolution to his life as he prayed in Gethsemane (Luke 22:42) but when he faced death, Jesus did not attempt to control the outcome to suit his desires. He was resolutely abandoned to the will of His trusted Father.
Where is this leading?
Are there any outcomes you are trying to control? Are you failing to trust God for the results of your ministry? This is a difficult question for many leaders who feel responsibility to produce. Spiritual “production” is not easily quantifiable and almost never controllable which complicates the pastor’s task immeasurably. Without a heart purposefully set on trusting God your ministry vision can be lowered from seeking Christlikeness in your people to bottom lines in your budgets, from prayer with your Father to power on your board. Once this happens, outlandish expectations of God – and disappointment when He does not live up to them – are inevitable.
How do we learn to follow in faith through the steps God has revealed into those He has not? In the history of the Church there has only ever been one answer to this question: we must get know God as He has revealed Himself.
That means we must stop thinking of God impersonally. I am convinced one of the reasons we are surprised by God’s ways is because we expect Him to work like an ATM. We punch in our PIN combination of prayer, Bible reading, holy-ish living and expect God to spit out the blessings we request. It is a very impersonal view and sometimes we don’t even realize we are taking it. But God is a person; not a human person, but He is personal. Persons often surprise us. Machines only do when they malfunction.
When you want to get to know someone you spend time with them. This is hardly surprising. But many of us, pastors included, neglect spending time with God and therefore do not know Him. Jesus had a habit of prayer that led to his intimacy with the Father. Christians overlook this point by assuming Jesus was automatically intimate with the Father by virtue of being God himself. But Jesus made prayer his habit. How can we do with any less?
But we often do settle by allowing information about God to substitute for intimacy with God. This temptation is especially seductive for professional Christians. For many, seminary training launches an unending pursuit of knowledge about Scripture. The deeper we dig, the more we know and the smarter we sound and the bigger our heads can become. But knowledge about God is not the same as knowledge of God and should never be mistaken for genuine relationship.
When I find myself struggling to control what happens in my life I often return to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Reflecting, I notice how Jesus trusts his Father. and watch as he struggles with and commits to God’s will. Try reading Mark 13:32-42 several times and reflect. There is no better picture of trust in God in desperate times.
Are you open to the outcomes God wants for you?
Will doing these things change God’s mysterious ways? No. God will always be somewhat mysterious and His ways will remain not our ways. Like every good mystery, God demands to be investigated and small clues and cues lead to deeper, eternal truths about His character. Slowly, we find we trust Him because we know Him. When we do we find He is always faithful.
Did God set Josh Hamilton up for disappointment? Hardly. Hamilton seems to understand that God promised him a home run, not a World Series ring. The home run and the experience of trusting God’s voice while going to the plate are their own reward.
What ways do you find you must trust outcomes to God? Do you ever struggle in your ministry to rely on Him? What practices have you developed to help bring you back to trust?
Related: Christ-Centered Ministry
