Does God Work With A Baseball Bat?

Imagine God working on you.  How’s His expression?  Is He holding a chisel?  A scalpel?  An eraser?  A hammer?  A baseball bat?  A stick of dynamite?

To be clear, I don’t mean that God is working on us, as if we were hard-packed ground requiring Supreme effort to make anything useful out of us.  Some of us think so, and pray, “Dear GOD!  If you can do ANYTHING with me, your NUMBER ONE SOB, then good luck!”  Come on, that’s not true at all.  God, who began with a perfect work in us, isn’t working ON us—“What a tough nut to crack Ralph is!”—but IN us (Phil 1:6).  That’s where He is!  He’s at home.  Paid off the mortgage and everything.  He’s very happy to be living in us, which makes the whole thing an inside job after all.

That’s why finding Jesus in us is such a wonderful thing, and worthy of listening and feeling and perceiving Him inside.  He’s planning on doing great things from there, things that are just like Him, exactly like He would be in the situations we face.  Now that God’s been God for more than a few years(!), He’s pretty good at knowing what to do, what to say and when to say it.  And now that He’s got all the experience of, like, forever, He never lacks understanding or care or love or any of that other God stuff.  Right?

What’s the point?  Good God, (wo)man, God’s in you!  Locked and loaded, ready to go, press start!

So if things have gotten confusing and fuzzy and exhausting lately, if you’re pretty much just going through the motions because you’ve got stuff to do, then hey.  First, God’s not mad at you.  God is not wringing His gargantuan hands over you, and He’s not reaching for his #548 Louisville Slugger baseball bat, and getting into His batting stance while keeping His eyes on the ball—you.  He’s not planning to get your attention by giving you a good whacking.  He loves you!  He’s totally convinced about you, and that’s a good thing. A really good thing.  He thinks that He’s made you spot-on perfect.  What if He’s right?

Maybe get a little quiet this weekend.  Maybe turn off the tube or the tunes, and listen for God.  Look for Him a little, maybe in a book, maybe outside, maybe in a sudden knowing of something great about you and God.  Pay attention to that.  He’s working with you.  You’re close, you’re tight—He made it happen.  Maybe pop THE BIG QUESTION:  “Father, what do you think of me?”  And be prepared to hear good news—gospel stuff, like, “I find no fault with you,” or “I love you perfectly,” or “I’m not worried about you,” or “My son, you should see what I see. It’s perfect.”

God works.

“For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”  (Ephesians 2:10).

That’s it.  Have a good weekend.  Ralph out.