“For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins.” — 2 Peter 1:8-9
I love to look at the Christian life like a baseball. A baseball is made up a certain way. Each individual baseball is made the exact same way as every other baseball in existence.
At the center of each baseball is a ball of cork. In my mind, my illustration, that cork represents Jesus Christ. In the same way that the cork is the center of the baseball, Jesus Christ is the center of the Christian’s life. The cork is what gives the baseball the ability to bounce off the bat and fly as far as it does. The presence of Jesus Christ in your life is where the power comes from. He is the reason your life will have any impact in the world. God is the center and the power source of the Christian’s life.
Wrapped around the cork of a baseball is a whole lot of string. The string is what gives the ball its shape. How well or how badly the string is wrapped around the cork has a lot to do with how well and how far that ball flies off the bat. The three verses previous to vs. 8-9 in 2 Peter 1 give a list of things we need to add to our lives as Christians, parts of our lives that work best when they’re wrapped the right way around Jesus Christ. I’ll go thru those in depth in another series. But when you look at the different parts of your life, different aspects of your world as a Christian, can you honestly say that it’s correctly wrapped around the cork of your life, Jesus Christ?
The third part of the baseball, the part that everyone sees, is two flawlessly white pieces of leather. Sown together and held together by red string representing the blood of Christ which seals us, holds us together, and makes us whole. These two pieces of leather I view as your own actions and attitudes. This is what everyone sees, but this is not who you are. Who you are is underneath. What everyone sees (your actions and attitudes) is simply a revelation of how well or how poorly we’ve wrapped our lives around Christ.
Now, suppose there was nothing underneath that cover that everyone sees. What if it’s all just hot air? What if your life is really more like a tennis ball? It looks good, it’s perfectly round and shapely. You swing and hit it with a bat and it flies even farther than the baseball. Isn’t that better? No, and I’ll explain why.
What happens when you hit the tennis ball too hard or too many times? It pops, and is now absolutely worthless. You hit a broken tennis ball and it drops to the ground 40 feet away from you, while baseballs typically hold their shape and form for years and decades.
Talking about the character qualities in vs. 5-7, Peter tells us that we would be useful and fruitful, if only we would make these things prevalent, and I’ll start to get into those character qualities later. If these parts of your life are wrapped correctly around Jesus Christ, the cork and center and power source of your life, He will both willingly and gladly use you to accomplish His will.
0 Comments