Kevin and I play city league softball (our church has a team). At our last game, Kevin was in left field and I was catcher. The first time he took the field, a ball was popped up to him. He caught it! The batter was out. Our team then got two more people out. Our teams switched – they took the field and we went to bat. I hit a hard grounder past third. I touched first base before the ball was thrown there. I was safe.

No one questioned any of these actions. No one hit the ball and ran directly to second base. No one got to three strikes and decided to keep trying to bat. At the end of the game, we had more points than the other team. No one said that we lost.

The rules of softball assure unity on the field. They force us to work as a team. Some teams have all star players, but no team wins with just one person on the field.

I can perfectly field a ground ball hit to third, but what good is it if there is no one at first for me to throw it to? How will we get anyone out?

My team needs the same goal. On the field, it is to get three outs quickly. At bat, it’s to get runners home. Overall…to win.

As Christians in the body of Christ, we must also work together for the same goal: to glorify Christ as we love others. Paul reminds the Philippian church to think “the same way, having the same love, sharing the same feelings, focusing on one goal.”

We cannot all be the pitcher, otherwise we will cause our own defeat.

Our softball team only takes the field on Monday evenings. But my role in the body of Christ is active everyday. There are no time-outs, no seventh inning stretches.

Last week our youth group teamed up with several other churches in our city for an in-town mission trip. I could stand to learn a lesson from them: that even though we gather at different locations to worship, we all serve the same Lord.

I’m clingy. Just ask my husband. Tuesday morning I kept hugging him even while he was brushing his teeth.

I also like to cling to objects that I deem valuable. Take my brand new pack of scrapbook paper for example. It’s the prettiest paper I’ve ever owned. I purchased it for the sole purpose of using it, and yet, when it came to scrapbooking a gift for my cousin’s graduation, I didn’t want to use it.

My heart is like those clingy little vines on my pea plant. In a matter of hours, they shoot out dozens of tiny tendrils that wrap around whatever is closest to them.

But last week, I realized they were choking themselves to death. They were grasping onto each other and themselves, which was actually squeezing their vine too tightly and breaking them. One even clung so tightly to my bell pepper plant that it squeezed off a bloom, thus preventing a bell pepper to grow. Not okay. So I set up twine for them to grab and climb up. I had to completely break off the tendrils that were killing it (and my peppers) and tie some to the twine to get it started.

If I’m not careful, my heart will latch onto things around me that aren’t good for me, too. That’s the stuff that’s called sin.

It’s not good enough for me to say that I need to “turn away from sin.” Turning my back on one sin can very well mean that I’m turning to a whole host of other sins. Just like my pea plants will have to learn to cling to the twine, I need to learn to cling to Christ.

But it hurts to let go. Just ask those pea tendrils that I had to snap off. God issues a call to repentance (AKA turning from sin)  in Joel 2:12-13.

“Even now – this is the Lord’s declaration – turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Tear your hearts, not just your clothes, and return to the Lord your God…”

Repentance is not a little matter. It’s not a quickly admitted “sorry” as though we are feuding preschoolers on the playground. True repentance from sin involves a change.

Stop turning away from sin and focus on turning to God. Once we learn to focus all our efforts on Him, then and then only will we see that God has turned us away from sinful things.

Repentance is a both/and. We both turn to God and away from sin. God does not promise an instant, pain free existence. Did you catch the phrase, “Tear your hearts, not just your clothes?” Our hearts latch to our sin. They don’t want to let go. It’s only in tearing it off the world that we will be able to live for Christ.

My coworkers have potted vines on their desks. They are easier to keep alive than flowers but harder than fake plants. Last summer, two of the vines had reached the floor. They told me that if I cut them off at the joints, I could stick them in water and they would grow roots. Then, I could plant them in dirt and start my own potted vine.

So I cut off two long vines, put them in a water  bottle, and stuck them on the windowsill of our apartment. A week later, my husband approached the subject with as much tact as he could muster.

“Renae, we’re not keeping those vines in water bottles forever, are we?”

I laughed and replied, “No. Just until they grow roots. Then we’ll plant them in dirt and let them grow.”

I watched them every day for three weeks. And every day for three weeks Kevin asked me, “Any roots yet?” My answer stayed the same, “Not yet.”

I had faith that my vines would grow on their own. For years, they have relied on other parts of the plant to bring its nutrients. It was the growth of another’s work. These leaves were merely the decoration that hung down the desk.

But then on week four, a little white thing looked like it was sprouting. Over night, it had grown a three inch root!

At the beginning of our walk with God, we are like that little vine. We (hopefully) are  discipled and taught how to follow Christ. But it’s not until we put the responsibility of having an individual quiet time on ourselves that we learn how to have a personal relationship with God.

John 16:7 says, “Nevertheless, I am telling you the truth. It is for your benefit that I go away, because if I don’t go away the Counselor will not come to you. If I go, I will send Him to you.”

The disciples could no longer rely on the physical steps of Jesus. They had to rely on a spiritual faith, one of listening to and obeying the Counselor, in order to grow in their relationship with God. And so do we.

“Your god – he is very powerful.”
 
He stopped gazing at the cargo ships in the harbor and looked directly into my eyes. The Lord had blessed us with many conversations about His love that summer, but that one statement wast he first time an adult came to the realization that our God is more than a character in a book.
 
My friend Joy and I were in Singapore the summer of 2010. The family we lived with decided to host a party in order for their friends to meet us. Somehow in the middle of dessert, we got to talking about an F4 tornado that had caused $40 million of damage to our college campus in 2008. After showing them pictures of the wreckage, they could not believe that God had spared every student’s life that night.
 
And that’s when it happened. For the first time in his life, this man realized that this God our host family had been telling him about was, indeed, a powerful God. Yet, despite this strength, He still chooses to walk with us today.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of saying, “God, I wouldn’t be sinning this much if only you walked with me in the garden like you did with Adam and Eve.” Or maybe, “God, I would stop struggling with my doubt if only I could be one of those twelve disciples that followed Jesus around.”
 
We have been fed the lie that the Holy Spirit is somehow the inferior member of the Trinity. Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit will dwell in us and guide us once we believe that Jesus is Lord.
 
We worship a God who is actively working in our lives and in the world. He is a God who sent His Son to the earth to get his feet dirty as He proclaimed the truth that God is the great “I am.” He is the God who walks with us through the good and the bad times. He is our pedestrian God. Praise the Lord!