See the Ball, Hit the Ball

Derek Jeter, who has played shortstop for the New York Yankees since the beginning of his Major League career in 1995, is widely acclaimed by both players and fans throughout the country as one of the greatest baseball players of this generation, and one of the most consummate professionals in the game. On July 9, 2011, Jeter reached a milestone in his illustrious baseball career by getting his 3,000th hit, and there are those who believe the all-time hit record of 4,256 held by Pete Rose is not out of his reach.

When asked about his philosophy of hitting, Jeter has never been one to go on at length with a detailed analysis of the mechanics of his approach. His response to such questions is disarmingly straightforward—some might say teasingly understated:

See the ball, hit the ball.

That's it. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Of course, it helps to have the natural talent that Derek Jeter possesses when it comes to putting this philosophy into practice, but that does neatly encapsulate the essentials of the art of hitting.

First, you see the ball.

The old cliché "keep your eye on the ball" is a bit harder than it sounds, because hitters only have a couple tenths of a second to track the pitch and decide whether or not to swing. Good hitters are often able to observe the spin of the ball in flight, thus recognizing the pitch being thrown and making instant adjustments in order to put a good swing on it. Good hitters also learn to "sit on" a pitch, or wait in anticipation for a certain pitch (fastball, slider, etc.) and be mentally prepared for it, often by observing the pitcher's style and patterns.

Then, you hit the ball.

Good hitters practice their swings relentlessly, carefully monitoring and modifying every single movement of every part of their bodies to obtain optimal results. They scrutinize every detail of their stance at the plate, and they work tirelessly on how to coordinate the movements of their shoulders, arms, hands, hips, legs, etc. They learn how to drive the barrel of the bat through different parts of the strike zone, and how to foul off pitches that are not good pitches to hit, but are too close to the strike zone to take.

There are experts who maintain that the act of hitting a baseball is one of the most difficult things to do in all of sports, although unless you've actually played organized baseball at a moderately competitive level, it may be hard for you to appreciate the truth of that statement. But the numbers say it all: On the average, Major League baseball players making millions of dollars a year are only able to get a base hit about 26 to 27 percent of the time. Only a handful of star players are able to succeed in excess of 30 percent of the time.

Imagine failing at what you do 70 percent of the time, yet being paid millions of dollars a year and being lauded as a superstar.

With hitting a baseball being the daunting task that it is, it's both refreshing and oddly reassuring to hear someone as successful at it as Derek Jeter articulate the key to his success in such clear, simple terms:

See the ball, hit the ball.

Jeter makes it sound so easy. He makes it sound as if anyone could do it.

But anyone can't do it. At least I couldn't, that's for sure. If you had seen what a spindly, pigeon-toed scrub I was in Little League and had witnessed the pathetic futility of my efforts in the batter's box, you'd understand. In my three-year Little League career, you could count my base hits on your fingers (with both hands not necessarily required).

However, hitting a baseball (or attempting to, in my case) was not my motivation for writing this article.

Signs in the heavens...or not

Three mornings a week I take a commuter train to different parts of the greater Taipei area to teach at different branches of my school, and it seems that it's during these commutes that God likes to give me little object lessons and affirmations—what some people refer to as "God Nods." Although I'm not sure how crazy I am about that name, whatever you want to call them, He gave me one not long ago that I felt impressed to share.

As I was looking out the window of the train, something in the clear blue sky caught my attention. I looked up and noticed that the contrails of two jets had crossed each other at a perfect right angle, forming a conspicuous and surprisingly well-formed cross in the morning sky.

Now, there's no reason whatsoever for any rational human being to get too excited about something like that, and I don't as a rule. I don't go buzzing around, blathering on about seeing a sign from God or something, and I tend to look askance at those who do. In fact, as I quietly appreciated what I consciously chose to interpret as a grand, visually stunning reminder of what Jesus did two thousand years ago, I smiled to myself as I thought how some people would be inclined to whip out their cell phones and take a video of it, and then post it on YouTube with a compelling title such as "MUST SEE!!! SIGN OF THE SON OF MAN SEEN OVER TAIWAN!!!???" or some such attention-grabbing, quasi-biblical hyperbole.

I kept my eyes fixed on this striking configuration of contrails for several seconds, and the Holy Spirit began stirring inside me—I knew He wanted to tell me something. I assumed He just wanted to use this to remind me how important it is for us to keep our eyes on Jesus. As I basked in the glow of this little affirmation, I just whispered, "Thank you, Father."

Along this particular line, however, there is a short section of track that passes through a tunnel, only for about five to ten seconds or so. The train entered this short stretch of tunnel, and when it emerged from the other end my eyes immediately went to what I thought was the same spot in the sky—but the cross was gone.

I searched the sky, but I couldn't see the cross anywhere. After a moment, of course, it occurred to me that the train must have turned slightly while it was in the tunnel and now the cross was out of my field of vision. I hadn't noticed the gradual turning of the train, but it had apparently turned just enough so that now the cross was nowhere in sight.

And that's when the real God Nod kicked in.

Keep your eye on the ball

In baseball, if you take your eyes off the ball, you stand an excellent chance of striking out—and in light of my Little League experience I feel eminently well qualified to make such a statement. The Holy Spirit just wanted to show me that there is a spiritual application of that principle. He wanted me to see that this is what happens when we take our eyes off Jesus, which we all do from time to time.

We all go through our tunnels. We lose our bearings and start looking in the wrong places for answers. We all experience a wavering in our faith, or a cooling of our devotion periodically. We all go off the reservation once in a while. We probably don't mean to, but we do. Maybe we don't consciously intend to wander off, but we just get a little too comfortable. Life is good. Things are humming along quite nicely behind His hedge of protection. God is blessing us, and it's s-o-o easy to get used to that. Or maybe I should say to forget that.

Maybe we start taking Him for granted. Maybe we just get complacent. Or lazy. We don't spend enough time in prayer, or bother to pray about matters that we should. We stop seeking God's will in various situations. We don't mine the treasures to be found in His Word the way we used to. We thoughtlessly pass up openings to talk to people about Jesus and about spiritual matters that you could drive an 18-wheeler through. We stop trying to follow the gentle leading of the Holy Spirit. Maybe we can't even hear the still, small voice of His Spirit over the cacophony of our thoughts, our ideas, our opinions, our plans, our desires, our motives, our gratification, our glory, and so on and so forth.

Our flesh can be loud.

Then the storm clouds gather. Some species of misfortune lumbers its way into our lives, and the first thing we do is wonder where God is and why He's obviously abandoned us.

Although we all take our eyes off Jesus from time to time, the Lord has ways of tweaking us and getting our attention and gently nudging us back in line and reminding us of our need to stay in fellowship with Him, just like the Good Shepherd that He is.

But sometimes we stray pretty far. We go too long without any substantial spiritual activity. We stop praying. We stop reading the Word. We stop growing. We lose interest in spiritual things because we're just, well, too busy. Or we let unconfessed sin put our fellowship with the Lord on the back burner. Or on ice. We allow other things to take priority, and ironically they often include things that are proper and important in their own right. Our jobs. Our families. Our friends. Our activities. Our church.

Sometimes we unwittingly (or rebelliously) allow our lives to go through a tunnel and take a gradual but ill-advised turn, and we invariably end up in a place where the Lord seems to be nowhere around. We let our lives drift so far from His will that when the storm comes, we're taken by surprise and whine about the fact that God allowed some calamity to happen to us. We just know that we need Him, and we wonder where He went.

But He didn't go anywhere.

We did.

The point is that we can't stray so far from Him that He can't stretch out His hand and catch us. He's not far off—He's right there. And we may try to drown out the voice of the Holy Spirit, but sooner or later we discover that we can't (assuming we've been born again and He is in us to begin with). Our flesh may be loud; but when God knows we're ready to listen (and He often allows things to happen to make us ready to listen), the voice of His Spirit comes through loud and clear. I know I've quoted this verse before, but I don't care...I'm going to keep on quoting it because there are people who need to keep hearing it:

His sheep hear His voice, even though some of us sheep don't always listen so well. But the single most important thing we have to do is to keep our eyes on the Lord. As long as we have our eyes on Jesus, we're moving in the right direction. Once we take our eyes off Him, that's when the trouble begins.

The race is set before us—all we have to do is keep our eyes on Jesus and run. Or walk, as the case may be:

One thing that strikes me about the story of Jesus walking on the water is how so many people fail to appreciate how much faith it took for Peter to get out of the boat in the first place. Peter trusted and obeyed Jesus to the point of risking his life. I wonder how many of us do—if I do. And notice that the other disciples weren't exactly shoving each other out of the way to clamber over the side of the boat and join Peter that stormy night. I wonder how many of us would have—if I would have.

When Peter stepped out onto the water, he started walking toward Jesus. He had his eyes on the Lord. It was only when he took his eyes off Jesus and focused his attention on the wind and the waves (not to mention the fact that he was, you know, walking on water) that he began to sink. He focused on the circumstances in the natural—and his faith faltered. His train went through a tunnel, so to speak, and he started sinking.

To Peter's credit, however, he didn't waste time trying to figure out how to continue walking on the water under his own power or through some other means.

He didn't whip out a pair of specially anointed Waves-o'-Joy Water Wings that he had ordered from his favorite Christian television ministry (available for a love offering of $50).

He didn't bind and rebuke the demons of the wind and the waves in the name of Jesus, and then name and claim a new Kokatat Sea O2 Personal Flotation Device...in the name of Jesus.

He didn't watch the latest DVD teaching series on Contemplative Dog-Paddling.

The only thing he knew at that moment was that he needed Jesus, and he cried out the three most important words in the entire history of the human race:

Lord, save me!

The moment Peter cried out for the Lord's help, Jesus immediately reached out to grab him. Notice that Jesus didn't hesitate for a few moments to let Peter suck some seawater to teach him a lesson. He didn't let him flounder helplessly in the water to send a message to the other disciples who were watching in wide-eyed amazement from the boat.

He immediately stretched forth His hand to catch him.

How hard can it be?

Notice, however, Jesus' words to Peter:

"Why did you doubt?"

This is the part that absolutely blows me away. Why did you doubt? Is He kidding?! Under the circumstances, it almost sounds like a stupid question.

I mean, Peter had just climbed out of a boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee—during a storm, no less—and had walked on water. He had just experienced a miracle: a temporary suspension of physical law. Peter had just demonstrated miracle-producing faith! He had just shown more faith than many of us will muster in a lifetime. In spite of that, because Peter took his eyes off Him, Jesus still chided him for having so little faith! And then He had the audacity to ask him Why did you doubt?

"Come on, Peter, you were doing so well. All you had to do was keep your eyes on me. All you had to do was trust me. All I asked you to do was to have faith in me. Why couldn't you do this one simple thing I asked you to do? I mean, duuh...what's so hard about that? Don't sweat the small stuff like the wind and the waves...and the gravity. I got things under control."

And He asks us the same question today: Why do you doubt?

"You've already trusted me for your salvation...what do I have to do to get you to put your complete faith in me for everything else in your life? Just get out of the boat and come to me. What are you afraid of? Or are you still so hooked on the things of the world and so dependent on your own abilities that fully trusting me is a problem for you?"

Why do you doubt?

Translation: See the Lord, trust the Lord.

That's it. Sounds simple, doesn't it?

Jesus makes it sound so easy. He makes it sound as if anyone could do it.

But anyone can do it. That's the point. We can all look to Jesus and have complete faith in His ability not just to save us from the ultimate penalty of our sin and give us a heavenly home in the hereafter, but also to work all things together for our good and to respond to our efforts to follow Him, obey His Word, and give Him pre-eminence in all aspects of our earthly lives in the here and now.

"Yeah, but...how do we do that, exactly? Sure, it sounds simple, but what's the secret?"

Well, I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that, thankfully, it doesn't require sitting in the lotus position. (That's especially good news for me because if it did, someone would have to break both of my legs at the knees.)

The bad news is that I just can't help myself with the Jeterisms:

Read the Word, obey the Word.

Simple, right?

You know, when Derek Jeter says "See the ball, hit the ball," anybody who knows the difference between a baseball and a bag of donuts knows that it in reality it's much more difficult than that. Jeter may make it sound simple, but common sense tells you it's far from it.

But you can trust the Lord. You can read and obey the Word. I don't care who you are or how long you've been in that tunnel—you can do those things. And you can start right now. It's not complicated. It's not difficult. It's not like trying to hit a 98-mph fastball. It sounds simple because it is simple...and the more willing we are to turn our lives over to Him and to the leading of the Holy Spirit, the simpler it gets.

The only thing getting in the way is our sin nature—our flesh. We all still have a sin nature that wars against the things of the Spirit as long as we inhabit this body of flesh, and that's why we all fail from time to time. But we have something else: the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, to guide us and conform us to the image of Christ.

There is one important fact that we should never lose sight of:

According to the Gospel of John, Jesus is the Word made flesh. That tells us that one of the primary ways to keep our eyes on Him is to read the Word (and there are those who let the Bible take a back seat to ecstatic or even mystical experiences who desperately need to be reminded of this). As we read the Bible, the Holy Spirit will enlighten our understanding, cause it to transform our minds and our lives, and motivate and empower us to obey it.

It all depends on how much we allow the Holy Spirit to have His way in our lives. That is, it's not how much we have of the Holy Spirit—it's how much the Holy Spirit has of us.

See the Lord, trust the Lord.
Read the Word, obey the Word.

I feel like going out and spray-painting these on the side of every church in town. (OK, not really...I'm just saying.) But I might make a poster of them and hang it on my wall, because this is how to avoid tunnels—and how to get your spiritual life back on track when you find yourself in one.

And anyone can do it.

Even a spindly, pigeon-toed scrub like me.

Greg Lauer — AUG '12

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