“Did you touch it?” Soccer players from both teams shouted in my direction.
At this stage of the game, whether I had touched the ball or not was very important. It decided whether it would be a goal kick for us or a corner kick for our opponents. The game time was almost up, but the score stubbornly remained at a draw. That’s why the eager faces of players from both teams stared at me in anticipation. My answer, as the goalkeeper, would determine the next play.
“I did,” I admitted, nodding my head.
“Why did you have to say that?” a new player on our team shouted at me. His reaction was typical of a player under pressure and didn’t surprise me at all. It’s what happened next that amazed me.
“He’s a Christian,” came the simultaneous answer from two or three other players in my defense.
“I don’t like that,” mumbled the new guy, but it was obvious that he was dumbfounded by the response of the other players.
I was taken aback too. I had hardly witnessed to these guys at all. A couple of them knew me as a pastor, and some of them got an occasional Activated mag, but I had witnessed (at length) to only one man, and he wasn’t coming to our Tuesday evening games any longer. The rest of the guys would show up in time for the game and leave soon afterwards. It was hardly an opportunity for in-depth conversation.
That’s why their strong convictions about my beliefs amazed me.
Another similar situation happened to me once before. Some time back, the only man on our soccer team whom I had deeply witnessed to shouted at me from a distance, after I admitted to touching the ball before it went out of play. “Tommy, this is not a church; this is a football pitch!” Needless to say, everyone had a good laugh.
Why am I writing this and why is it important to me? Because it encouraged me immensely.
You see, I do much less personal witnessing than I used to. I miss it and I also feel bad about it. It’s almost like a part of my heart was cut out of me. After all, talking to people about Jesus was the main reason for my existence, I thought. At times I have had to fight off condemnation that maybe I wasn’t doing my job properly.
Yet, here, unsolicited and from the mouths of others, comes: “He’s a Christian.” When I least expected it and from the people that I least expected to hear it from.
It turned out that I was being a witness, simply by trying to follow the Lord. The Lord wanted me to be honest (as I should always be) about touching the ball. Simple as that. All I had to do was to tell the truth, and Jesus took care of the rest. It didn’t even need to be a showy miracle in order to attract their attention, like the five loaves and two fishes were. Just two words were enough.
There was something else about that whole situation that was both contradictory and sobering.
The majority of players that I play with would say they were Christians, yet they had a different standard for me as a missionary than they had for themselves. The funny part about it was that they saw no contradiction in it.
In their minds, it was okay for them to tell a little “white lie” in a game of soccer. At the same time, if I were to do that, it would be wrong. Since I professed to be a missionary, I was expected to stay on the straight and narrow path no matter what.
I thank God for His grace to do just that.
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