B Game Days

Some days you are on fire. You have the good feeling, things are working out, you have that confidence that you could hit every ball out of the proverbial park. You are all pumped up and ready to serve God. Things are working out, life is good and you can really taste and see that the Lord is good. You are on your A game, giving it stacks and seeing great results. And then there’s every other day. The ‘B Game Days’. Those days when it is more of a chore than a joy. Those days when you don’t feel good enough. When all your efforts fall short. When you drop every ball you try to catch. When the passion is lacking and you feel like giving up. And I don’t know about you, but I tend to find the B game days are much more common than the A game ones. I think we need to realise that no-where in the Bible does God promise to turn everything we touch to gold (feel free to check if you don’t believe me!) No-where in the Bible does God promise that just because we are following him life will be a bunch of roses. (In fact Jesus warns us quite the opposite – in John 15:20-21 He warns the disciples “Do you remember what I told you? ‘A slave is not greater than the master.’ Since they persecuted me, naturally they will persecute you. And if they had listened to me, they would listen to you. They will do all this to you because of me, for they have rejected the One who sent me.”) Things are going to get tough. There will be days when it seems the whole world is against you. People will misunderstand you. There will be people who hate you because you follow Jesus. You aren’t going to be on top of your game every day, so stop beating yourself up and making yourself feel even worse when you have a bad day. What we need to realise is that God knows we aren’t always going to be on fire for Him. That’s why He gave us the Holy Spirit to help us. When we are feeling totally out of it, when it is looking like being not a B game day but a C or even D game day, we need to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to be at work in our life, restoring our passion for Christ, filling us with the fruit of the spirit on those days we feel totally lacking in them. And here’s the good news. God loves to use weakness to work through. 1 Corinthians 1:27 says: “God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful.” When you are having a bad day God can still work through you. That way He gets more glory as you can be sure it definitely wasn’t through your strengths that things got achieved. So if today has been a B game day for you, admit to God that things haven’t been great (because He wants us to be honest with Him.) Ask for help in reviving your passion for him. And be on the lookout for ways you can serve Him despite not feeling on top of your game, thus letting all the glory go to Him.