Leave Nothing

Have you seen this commercial? Not only is it just a cool commercial, I love the tag line "Leave Nothing". This tag line sums up my latest thoughts on faith.

I had a minor knee injury during my soccer days as a Freshman in high school. After I had recovered and had been playing again for a few weeks my coach approached me and put his hands on my shoulder. He said "Does this hurt?" and he kicked my knee. I said "No". He said "Then stop playing like it does." I remember, vividly, the next game I played and how great I played. No, didn't score a goal or even save any goals, but, man, I made some great plays. Those few words my coach said empowered me to do what we both knew I was capable of. That next game I left nothing in myself, I gave it all to playing that game.

I've witnessed several situations lately where people within the church have had to make difficult decisions about life and faith and how they work together. I've also watched how the "community" of the church has played a role in assisting people in making those decisions or carrying those decisions out. At one point I told CDK that as the church we have to do everything in our power to help people and be a part of community with them. I don't believe God called us to walk this road of Christianity alone and that if we sit back and passively watch others believers in our lives go on their merry way and never invest in them, then we are not doing what we're called to do. We can't leave any stone unturned when we are trying to work together as the body of Christ, we must put forth all our effort and explore every option of how to work through situations, good and bad ones. I think it's sometimes easier to let our excuses of "it's a personal issue" or "I don't want to intrude" cover our apathy. Shouldn't we care enough about each other to intrude? Especially when the stakes are high. Though my theory is that if we "intrude" (and I use this word to simply mean, being part of each others lives in an intentional way) in the everyday, small things, we will naturally be a part of the big things.

Christianity isn't an individualistic pursuit. Even Christ wasn't alone, he had his community of the 12 disciples. So why do we think we can do it ourselves? And how far do we actually take that? We've seen the results of taking it too far, cults like the Branch Davidians. And it's easy to see the results of our faith pursuits being too individualistic, just look at the number of denominations out there and new churches starting everyday.

I think that at the end of each day we should crawl in bed exhausted and think "Man, I played a great game today." And that game being the one of faith, one where we leave nothing lacking in relationships with believers and non-believers, one where we know that we did everything God asked us to do that day and he's smiling, because he knew all along we were capable of that, with his help. The only difference is that sometimes, unlike my knee, it will hurt. There will be hard days, there will be defeats, and there will be people who don't want us, or God rather, in their lives, but the end result is much more exciting than a great day on the soccer field.