Playing to Our Strengths
The first time I beat my dad in ping-pong was on his 40th birthday. He proceeded to shellack me for the next few weeks, but I already digress. I loved ping-pong and was pretty good at it as long as I didn’t have to go against any southpaws. When I moved to Prague to do mission work, I bought a ping-pong table and set it up in my apartment living room as a way to reach out to folks. It was a hit and we set up a lot of Bible studies over ping-pong. Anything interesting from the world of ping-pong caught my attention, but one particular factoid I gleaned from somewhere during high school is still lodged in my head. This is where I finally get on track.
Growing up, the Chinese were almost unbeatable in world-champion and Olympic ping-pong. I read their strength came from focusing on their strengths and not trying to work on their weaknesses. They became so overwhelming in their particular strengths they never gave their opponents the chance to exploit their weaknesses.
And it strikes me – in our Christian walk, do we play to our strengths or our weaknesses? Sometimes I feel overwhelmed with all the false stuff the world throws at me, the myriad “reasons” why it won’t follow Christ, and why I should just keep my head down and be quiet. Truth be told, I can’t keep up with all the arguments people throw against following. It’s bewildering – the information overload is too great to process, let alone combat.
We don’t have to – not if we play to our strengths. And let’s face it, the reason why they are so powerful is because they aren’t “our strengths.” They belong to Jesus, who strengthens us. What did Jesus do? He changed people’s lives by loving them into the Kingdom. He didn’t coerce. He didn’t go for any jugulars. When He was critical, it was against people who should have known better – people with religious credibility who were keeping others out of the Kingdom by withholding compassion… mercy… love.
Think about this – we all have someone or group of someones we just can’t see coming to Jesus. I submit it’s probably because we haven’t been playing to our strengths. We haven’t been loving like Jesus….