When I was a small child I was diagnosed with a heart condition that prompted doctors to forbid me to participate in team sports. Soccer, football, baseball, basketball. All of those sports were off-limits on an "official" basis, but of course I played in the backyard, driveway, and gym at church. Still, playing pickup ball was no substitute for actually being on the field or the court. For me, the best that I could do was watch as a spectator. Sure, that's what most of us do with sports when we get older, but as a child and young man this was a pretty dismal thing to have to accept.
Once I got to college you could say that hit a rebellious streak when it came to sports. Intramural sports was a big deal to most of the students and there was no one around to tell me not to join a team. During my years of college I participated in weight lifting, wrestling (which was a bad idea), flag football, basketball, soccer, and softball (another bad idea, but this time because I was absolutely horrible at it). Yet even though it was great to finally be able to play on a team with other guys, each event was limited in its time frame and, although we wanted to win we never truly took the games too seriously. Rarely did we practice and the seasons usually only lasted a few weeks.
What I truly longed for all of those years when I still had a bit of athleticism left in me was for the chance to immerse myself in a sport. I'm not sure what I would have excelled in, but soccer might have been the one thing that I would have pursued the hardest. I never truly knew the satisfaction of being on a team, much less one that won anything. Although my life is far from incomplete because I missed those opportunities, I was never completely satisfied with just being a spectator.
Not everyone has the chance to immerse themselves into sports or much of anything else. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive for it. You may not be the next sports superstar or CEO of Mega-Corp, but those pursuits are small when compared to what we must strive to immerse ourselves in the most. When it comes to Jesus, immersion is the option you must choose.
Jesus is not merely to be watched. Choosing to participate in Christ is settling for mediocrity at best. What you must strive for is to immerse yourself in Him, not accepting any degree of separation from Him. This means investing all of yourself in Christ. Following Him with every fiber of your being. Striving to be like Him in all things. Having the same attitude that Christ had. You get the picture.
Your relationship with Christ is not a spectator sport, a Sunday-only exercise. If athletes train haphazardly they get less than average results. If you choose to be casual with Christ, you will never fully know the joy and beauty of His love and grace and presence. Immersion is the only way.
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