I’ll Never Play for the Dodgers
Being around professional ballplayers during Spring Training a few years ago reminded me of one of the toughest lessons I had to learn growing up: I will never play for the Dodgers.
My problem wasn’t that I didn’t dream of playing for the Dodgers. That was just about all I thought about during my little league years. I took extra infield practice, worked on my hitting, and may have been the most enthusiastic and dedicated little blossoming first basemen ever.
But, by the time I went to high school, it became very obvious. I would never play first base for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Shoot, I couldn’t even play first base for the South High Rebels.
I didn’t have a “want-to” problem. I had an “able-to” problem—a capacity problem.
Watching the Dodgers take infield practice and batting practice at Vero Beach, it hit me again. As much as I love baseball, I’m just not very good. On my best day I could never do what those guys do every day.
That was Solomon’s problem. He wanted to do all the good things he wrote in the Proverbs. He just wasn’t able to—he didn’t have the capacity. So, at the end of his life, he could only conclude, “It’s all meaningless.” (Ecclesiastes 1:14)
But I’m A World-Changer!
This is why I love being a follower of the Lord Jesus. For the first time in history, those of us who have been delivered by the truths we celebrated last weekend—the death and resurrection of God’s Son, have the capacity to do what Solomon and all the other saints of the Old Testament couldn’t. On Solomon’s best day he couldn’t do what we can do every day.
Not because we’re better than them, not because we’re smarter than them, but because of the radical truth of John 14:20: “At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you”—our union with Christ.
Because of our union with Christ, we live in an entirely different spiritual environment than Solomon. We live in the sphere of resurrection life—Christ lives in us (Colossians 1:27).
Paul says that our union with Christ means that we have been co-crucified with Christ—set free from the power of sin, and co-resurrected with Christ—alive to a newness of life and the power not to sin (Romans 6:1-10).
Wow, the wisest man who ever lived didn’t have the power I have as a church-age believer. I’m out of his league because Christ lives in me.
I will never play first base for the Dodgers, but I can play in God’s big league. I am a new creation in Christ and I do not have to live the way I used to live. I have been set free from the Old Ed, and the New Ed has victory over sin.
And so do you if you are in Christ. Friend, if you have not trusted in Christ, do so today. He died for your sin and arose. If you will believe in Him, you too can play in His big league of victory over sin.
And if you’re in Christ and still trying to pull it off in the old way, the Solomon way, the gut-it-out-on-my-own-way, you need to know that Christ is inviting you to be a star on His team.
“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
