The Simplicity of God

The other day I was driving through Edmond, and I saw this kid, he was probably 11 or 12 years old outside his driveway shooting baskets. And, I don’t drive around town as much as I used, but I don’t think there’s as many people shooting baskets on their driveway as there used to be as well. So it stood out to me, it reminded me a lot of some of the things that I enjoyed most as a child—shooting baskets in my driveway for hours and hours, days on end it seemed.

Another activity I enjoyed thoroughly was just playing baseball in my backyard, and I didn’t have a lot of friends to come over and play with me. Or, I had a lot of friends, but I didn’t have a lot of friends who were in to baseball. And baseball you need a lot of people to play. So I had my dad, of course, to play catch with quite a lot. Then when he wasn’t available I had to somehow make it work myself. And we had a pretty big backyard, surrounded by this 4-foot cyclone fence. And during the summer, when I wasn’t in the front of the house shooting baskets, I’d be in the backyard, oftentimes playing baseball with myself. As impossible as that might seem to many of you, the way that it worked is I had three baseballs, and I positioned myself diagonal to one of the corners of the fence, where one of the posts was, and I’d be about 60 to 70 feet away, and my objective was to fire those baseballs at the post there at the corner of that cyclone fence. If I hit the post or if I was close to the post, it was a strike. And if I didn’t hit the post, which happened quite often, it hit the mesh background of this fence. And, of course, over time, over a couple of years, what happened at that corner of our yard, was that this fence just had these huge baskets and then this solid post right in the middle. So you had this nice, tight fence riding the border of the backyard, and then the two baskets there right around the corner where I used to pitch over and over and over again. Of course, only having three baseballs, it was good exercise for me. I’d fire the three balls, then I’d walk down there get the three, come back to my pitching mound, and the game would resume. Very enjoyable, at least for me.

Back then, as I’m sure it was for many of your lives, when you were youngsters, when you were teenagers, life was relatively simple. The game of baseball, really has a lot of intricacies and details, I suppose, but it’s also a very simple game: the idea is to hit the ball and to catch the ball. And you see professionals do that these days quite well.

Well, as you would imagine, after years and years of doing this I actually got to be pretty good at pitching, at least pitching to a fence. I didn’t have a lot of batters that I was going up against. And, I think when I got up to 5th grade and 6th grade I started playing Little League. And I really lucked out when I signed up for Little League. Because the coach looked at me; he saw that I was fairly small, I was quick and thought, well, let’s put him in shortstop and let him run around there. I thought, Wow, shortstop. That’s one of the best positions to be playing.

So I grew up in Little League playing shortstop and the same thing happened when I got into junior high. I played shortstop there on the team; I made the starting lineup. And one of the best players on the team was an individual named Ronny. He played first base. He was a big husky fellow that had a really good swing—he was a good hitter—and had a really good glove as well. And we got towards the end of my 8th grade year, and I was really starting to bog down a bit. I was still in this sort of stereotype mode, of well you’re shorter and quicker, so, you know, you’ve got to be real active in the batting box and just try to make contact and get down the baseline and get on the base, that was the idea. And I really started to digress quite a lot as a hitter, and because I did that, I started to lose confidence and I wasn’t playing that well in the field either. So we got toward the end of my 8th grade year and I started to hear these rumors around school that Ronny was gonna try out for shortstop the next year. And this, this really terrified me.

I had all summer, the beginning of the next school year when basketball season was going, to think about well is he or is he not going to try out for shortstop? So when the season began my 9th grade year, sure enough, there he was fielding grounders at shortstop, trying out for that particular position. And by that point, I was just so overcome with fear and timidity and lacking in confidence that I just played that much worse. And I lost the starting job, my coach put me in right field, which for me that was like being sent into Siberia or something. You didn’t play right field in Little League or junior high unless you were the worst player on the team. Or at least the worst of the starting lineup. I was thankful to be starting, but it was disappointing to be stuck in right field, and that move really, I think it hurt my confidence in batting even more. I couldn’t hit. And because I couldn’t hit, my coach put me at the end of the batting order. And making matters worse, Ronny’s twin brother—his name was Donny—he came to me (this is a true story), he came to me just offhandedly said, “I overheard the coach tell my dad that you’re one of the worst hitters on the team.” And I thought, Really? Are you serious? This is the worst year of my athletic life. To be called the worst hitter on the team; to lose your starting job; to be demoted to right field; to be playing with no confidence whatsoever; and to be carted off, basically, to the bench on a number of occasions too because of the way I was playing.

So, to make a pretty long story short, I guess, I really did fear failing coming into that 9th grade year, and I eventually failed. There you go; I failed. And that was, that was what happened. So it was at that point, where I was at the depths of despair, at least as far as 9th grade athletes could be, that my dad set me aside and started to talk to me and said, “Look, you’ve got to simplify things here. You’re, you’re really distracted by all these things going on around you. And you’ve got to come back to the point where you’re playing baseball. You’re playing a game that you love. It’s a wonderful sport. And yet it’s a sport. It’s a silly sport. And you’re just getting all wound-up inside—all tied into knots over these things that you can’t control. Start simplifying things and work on what you can control. Work on what you can do.”

So he took me to the batting cages and I got down into this, you know, this stance where there was all this crouching and movement and jitteriness and wild swinging. And he said, “Look, let’s just strip all that stuff away, and just stand there. You don’t have to stand straight up like a board, you know, bend your knees slightly, but just relax in your stance. And don’t wave the bat or anything; hold it back to where it’s the most comfortable, and concentrate on hitting the baseball. That’s all you’re supposed to do. You’ve got to make contact. That’s all you can do. Make solid contact with the baseball.”

And after a few sessions at the batting cages, I mean this was, I mean this transformed me into, not just a better hitter, I became the best hitter on the team almost overnight. Just getting up there every time and making good, solid contact. And this really helped my confidence. I didn’t get a chance to go back to shortstop, but by that point I was just enjoying the fact that I started in right field, I was hitting much better, and then I approached my coach and said, “Look, I’ve always had this desire to pitch.” And our pitching staff wasn’t real strong that year, and I saw that from right field, in fact I was chasing a lot of balls because of it. And I thought, You know, I pitched my whole life, growing up, at that dumb fence. And I wanted to give it a shot and he was nice enough to give me a chance. He put me in as a relief pitcher one game, toward the end, and I pitched one inning, and I struck out all three of the batters. And this really helped to get me excited about pitching. Before that I thought, Well, I’m smaller, I don’t throw very hard, and, you know, all these pitchers are really big guys, I really couldn’t do it. But all those years of pitching at the fence really helped me to develop a little bit of a curve ball, and this was hard to hit for a lot of 9th graders. So, by the end of the season, I started the last game (and this was the last baseball game I ever played actually because we moved to Oklahoma and I focused on basketball here), but I started the game and it was just one of the best experiences I had as a youth playing sports.

All in all, a season that was probably filled with more obstacles, more trials, more failures than any other I had experienced, it ended up becoming one of the most rewarding experiences I ever had in sports. And I’d say by far. I learned that season in baseball, that the problem wasn’t Ronny wanting to try out for shortstop, it wasn’t someone’s negative comment directed at me, the problem wasn’t my coach because he’d demoted me to right field—the problem was me! And when I got rid of some of those distractions and those obstacles, then everything returned back to the way that it was when I was just a little kid out in my backyard firing baseballs at that cyclone fence. It was all simplified and it was much easier to enjoy after I got past some of that, those distractions.

Let’s look at 2 Corinthians chapter 11. There’s a point to be made here, more important than enjoying baseball. I mean really, when you think about God’s way of life, it has its challenges. I’m not here to tell you that it’s just easy, or that there’s even just one thing that we can focus on and everything else goes smoothly. But really in the broad, spiritual lessons and principles that we read in the scriptures, as we’ll read in just a second, there really is just one thing that you can focus on. Not one thing like hitting a baseball, let’s say, but if your focus and concentration is on one, main point, as we’ll see here in just a second, everything else gets a lot better.

Verse 3 says, “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” That word simplicity there means “[W]ithout self-seeking, or unselfish.” It can also mean “[S]ingleness or oneness ….” Paul said I fear that you’re being led away, or led astray by Satan. Led away from the simpleness, the purpose of Jesus Christ—God’s purpose.

Matthew chapter 6 is a good companion section of scripture to this verse we just read. Matthew 6. How simple and single in focus is your purpose day in and day out. Each week. Each month. This is a world that really does distract a lot of young people, a lot of adults too. Satan’s hurling a lot of distractions at us and we better make sure we keep our eye on the ball, so to speak. That we focus in on what we’re here to do, most of all.

Matthew 6 verse 22, it says, “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore your eye be single, your whole body shall be full of light.” If your eye, that’s talking about the mind, if your mind is single, or focused on hitting the ball, then your whole body, your whole countenance, your confidence, your purpose, everything is better—if you keep things simple enough for you to get in what’s most important each day.

Verse 23 says, “But if your eye be evil, your whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness!” It says there. If your mind is focused on evil things, then you’re going to lead a dark, dismal existence. You won’t be full of light, of positivity, of joy, of productivity.

Verse 24, “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” Or materialism. You cannot serve God and the material things of this world. Now we’re meant to work with matter, God put Adam and Eve in the garden and commanded them to dress and to keep it, to work with their environment for sure, but we can’t let the things of this world, or materialism, steal away our devoted focus to God and His way of life. And as I said, for so many young people, that’s what’s happening today. And they’re not getting happier because of it. It’s robbing them of joy.

There was an article recently in the New York Times about growing up digital and how our young people today are wired for distraction, as the article brings out. It has quite a long article that appeared in the Sunday edition, and there’s a number of interviews that the journalist has, quotes even from young people. One of them who said, “I’ll be reading a book for homework and I’ll get a text message and pause my reading and put down the book, pick up the phone to reply to the text message, and then 20 minutes later realize, ‘Oh, I forgot to do my homework.’”

Quoting another one, “I’m doing Facebook, YouTube, having a conversation or two with a friend, listening to music at the same time. I’m doing a million things at once, like a lot of people my age,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll say: I need to stop this and do my schoolwork, but I can’t.” I can’t. He can’t stop it and do what he needs to do. And furthermore there’s not authoritarian there to tell him to stop it. That’s also brought out in the article.

Quoting the piece, “Sean’s favorite medium is video games; he plays for four hours after school and twice that on weekends. He was playing more but found his habit pulling his grade point average below 3.2, that’s the point at which he felt comfortable. He says he sometimes wishes that his parents would force him to quit playing and study, because he finds it hard to quit when given the choice.”

Here’s a young person, students, here’s a young person who wishes his parents would intervene and say “That’s enough. Turn it off. Focus on what’s most important.” But they won’t do it. And as he admits, he won’t do it, given the choice between the two. Choosing to be wired or to shut it off and peer into the book and begin with his studies.

“Still, he says, video games are not responsible for his lack of focus, asserting that in another era he would have been distracted by tv or something else.” It’s easy to reason around it of course. And really, video games are not responsible. It’s the fact that there’s no control there to hit the off switch. That’s what’s lacking. That’s what’s missing.

Verse 25 says, “Therefore I say unto you, Take no though for your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink; nor yet for your body, what you shall put on. Is not the life more than mean, and the body than raiment?” Christ is saying here stop worrying about all the things you can’t control. Don’t get uneasy about physical things. There’s more to life than physical pleasure. There’s more to life than materialism.

Satan has so much to offer in the way of glamor and glitz. He likes, you know, something really splashy, bright lights that’s seen as fascinating and exciting in this age. And yet look at how much doubt and failure and disappointment and discouragement and worry and fear, all of that produces. Look at the unhappiness in this world. Even where they have the bright lights and the glitz. Look at the unhappiness that’s together there with it. Look at the unhappiness among young people who are out there pursuing those sorts of things. Wired for distraction as the article brings out. And yet, without any awareness, any awareness as to why we are born, what is our purpose for being. Why we are on this Earth? What does God mean for us to do? Where are we headed? What happens after we die? Where do we go from here?

Verse 26 says, “Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than they? [27] Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?” Now, God certainly isn’t saying here that we shouldn’t organize and plan and set goals and that sort of thing, but He is certainly stressing the importance of priorities. And that what good is a list of goals if you don’t have the most important one at the top of the list?

Verse 28 says “And why take you thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: [29] And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. [30] Wherefore,” verse 30 says, “if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” That’s what Christ is getting at here. Do we look to God to provide for us? Do we seek God? Do we have close, personal contact with God? Is our relationship with God right? Because if it is, so many of those other things will be added to us, as we’ll see here in just a second. We’ve got to get it right with God though. We’ve got to strip away the distractions, the things that are worrying us, the fear of failure, and just think about the simplicity, the simplicity of Christ, and what it is that we’re meant to do first and foremost.

Verse 31 says, “Therefore take no though, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or Wherewithal shall we be clothed? [32] (For all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things.” See God knows. God knows what we need. And yet God doesn’t just hand it out to those who are unthankful, unappreciative, caught up in their own lusts and cares of this life. He wants us to come and to ask Him, to seek Him, to approach His throne, to show Him, by doing so, that He, above all else, matters most. He has first priority.

Verse 33 says, “But seek you first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” Seek God first. That’s the surefire way to keeping your life simple, focused, happy, successful. That’s the way, students, that eliminates so many fears and the worries and the complexities that are so common in this age. God’s life is not the smooth and easy road, for sure, I’ve brought that out before in forums. But it is the best way. It is the happy way. And it certainly is the way that is focused on the one main point that matters the most for you and your life.