Audience of One

The theme for our baseball teams for the next two weeks is "worship."  That's a difficult word because of all the preconceptions we bring to it.  Worship simply means that whatever we give our energy, time, sacrifice, devotion, and sometimes money to, that thing or person is what we worship.

We want our sport to be an opportunity to worship, not the object of worship.  If it becomes the object of worship, not only will we be disappointed in the end (baseball is a fickle god--sometimes it's good to us, sometimes it's not), but we lose out on the joy of giving back to God through our efforts and intensity.

By playing for an audience of One, God gets the glory and we get the joy.  Because we receive our talents and abilities from Him and then we hone them throughout our lifetime with our efforts, we worship God by laying them back at His feet when we compete.

The apostle Paul said it this way in Romans 12:1:  "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship."

He tells us to offer our physical bodies as sacrifices to God.  When we play baseball or any other game, we have the opportunity to offer our bodies in devotion to God.  When we do this it becomes an act of spiritual worship.  Many times I have been criticized for pairing physical training with spiritual ideas.  We are told here that the two cannot be separated.  What we do with our bodies--our hands, biceps, legs, eyes, genitals--is an act of worship.  Those things are tied to what is happening in our hearts when we do them.

A question to ask myself anytime I do something with my body is this:  Is this holy and pleasing to God?  If I can answer that question with a yes, then I am probably on the right path of worship.

As Rick Warren once said, though, the problem with a living sacrifice is that it can "crawl off the altar."  We often slip off the proverbial altar and do our own thing with our bodies, disregarding what God has laid out for us. 

Throughout my athletic career and into my coaching career, it has been tough to not worship the sport in which I participate.  I find that the more time I spend and the more effort I give, the more that thing, in my case wrestling, becomes an object of worship for me.  I have often let the sport become more important than God.  It begins to take first place in my heart.  Jesus said, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:21)"  Very easily the sport can and has become my treasure, and thus my object of worship.

This is not to say that effort and time toward something is wrong.  It simply means that where my heart is in the process is what's important.  God is always concerned with the heart, not necessarily the outward action.  Jesus said to the religious people of his day, "These people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me. (Mark 7:6)"

Some people say the opposite of Christianity is atheism.  According to God's words in the Old Testament, the antithesis of Christianity is idolatry.  The first two commandments God laid out for Moses were, "You shall have no other gods before me," and, "You shall not make for yourself an idol...You shall not bow down to them or worship them... (Exodus 20:3-5)"  In other words, play and live for God as our audience.  Put Him first.  Lay our talents and abilities back at His feet by the way we play, not doing it for our own glory but for His.

Martin Luther said that if we obeyed these first two commandments then we would have no issues with the other eight.  If we worship God, we won't worship the body of a woman and commit adultery.  If we worship God, we won't worship things and covet other people's stuff.  Seems simple but is the greatest battle of humankind.  It is the cause of most of the relational misery we see in our world today.

Oswald Chambers said it this way, "Worship is giving God the best that He has given you."

Let's play ball!