The Rookie
From the Series—God at the Box Office
April 2, 2003The Rookie is based on the true story of a thirty-five year-old high school teacher named Jimmy Morris who rediscovers his dream of playing Major League Baseball. On September 18, 1999, after being out of the game for a decade, Jimmy Morris made his Major League debut as a Tampa Bay Devil Ray. In the preface to his book, The Rookie , Jimmy Morris says, “It’s not me, exactly, who touches people; it’s what I represent: the possibility that dreams from long ago may still come true, even if they look lost forever.”
The Country of Lost Freshness
At the beginning of the movie, Coach Morris gives his players a pep talk. He says, “If you don’t have dreams, you don’t have anything.” That’s a pretty good paraphrase of Proverbs 29:18. “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” The word “perish” means “to rot.” If you don’t have vision, there is nothing to stop the process of decay . But the opposite is true as well. Vision is a preservative. It keeps us from getting old.
Henry James called the passage of years a slow, reluctant march into enemy country. He called the enemy country “the country of the lost freshness.” Henry James theorized that if a person never lost their freshness they would never grow old . I find that fascinating in light of Proverbs 29:18. Dreams keep us young --whether we’re thirty-five like Jimmy Morris or eighty-five like Caleb.
Caleb was one of twelve spies who explored the Promise Land and one of two that brought back a positive report. The Israelites didn’t listen to Caleb’s advice and wandered aimlessly for forty years as a result. In Joshua 14, Caleb is an octogenarian. He says, “Here I am today, eight-five years old! I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out: I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then.” And then you can hear forty-five years of pent-up conviction in his voice. “Now give me this hill country that the Lord promised me that day.” Caleb doesn’t want Joshua to give him a settled piece of property. He’s not ready to retire! He wants the hill country--the land of giants.
Let me ask you a question: do you know very many people who are as strong and as vigorous at eighty-five as they were at forty-five ? How can Caleb be “as strong” and “as vigorous” after wandering in the wilderness for forty years? The answer is simple: the vision of possessing the Promise Land never died. And that vision kept him young. It kept him fresh. It was a preservative. It didn’t allow him to get old.
Harriet Doerr says, “One of the best things about aging is being able to watch imagination overtake memory.” She knows where of she speaks. Harriet dreamed of going to college, but money then marriage then kids kept her from going. But the dream never died. Not only did she graduate from Stanford University with a BA. She did it at sixty-seven years of age. Harriet didn’t stop there. She dreamed of writing a book. Her first book, Stones for Ibarra, was published when she was seventy-four years old.
Ashley Montague, the anthropologist, said, “I want to die young at a ripe old age.” That’s what dreams will do for you! Here is the big idea: you start dying when you have nothing worth living for and you start living when you have something worth dying for.
The Ancient Dream
In the preface to his book, Jimmy Morris talks about all the autograph-seekers and letter-writers who were inspired by his story. He said, “None of it had to do with baseball. These people were doctors and janitors, executives and retirees. I greeted the smiles of seventy-year-old men as they asked for my autograph, and I read the words of letter writers whom I’d inspired to chase an ancient dream.” That’s what happens when we come to Christ. We start dreaming again. We rediscover the “ancient dream “ that the Ancient of Days has for us.
Last week’s evotional talked about the spiritual chain reaction that happens the moment we put our faith in Christ. One derivative of that decision is the infilling of the Holy Spirit. Acts
2:17 says, “I will pour out my spirit on all people your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.” In other words, seeing visions and dreaming dreams is a spiritual thing. It is the supernatural spin-off of being filled with the Holy Spirit.
One of the fundamental mistakes a lot of Christians make in their approach to life is playing not to lose . We try to be good by not doing anything bad, but as Dallas Willard says, “Not going to London or Atlanta is a poor plan for going to New York.” Here’s the thing: goodness is not the absence of badness. Erwin McManus says, “The great tragedy is not the sins we commit, but the life we fail to live.” I like the way John Maxwell puts it. “Potential is God’s gift to us. What we do with it is our gift to God.” God doesn’t just want to eliminate sin from our lives. He also wants to help us rediscover the ancient dream--the thing we can live for and die for.
The Law of Inertia
If you’re going to rediscover your dream, there are some obstacles you need to overcome. The biggest dreambuster is inertia. The main reason most dreams stay dreams is because we never do anything about them. It’s the law of inertia --"the tendency of anything to resist a change in its motion.” It’s a lot easier to keep on doing what your doing than to change direction and pursue a dream.
One of my favorite scenes in the movie is the locker room scene where each player shakes Jimmy Morris’ hand and says, “It’s your turn, Coach.” Jimmy Morris would have never pursued his dream if his players hadn’t pushed him. In the book, Jimmy Morris said, “No one my age who’d been out of baseball ten years had ever played in the majors. It was impossible . The risk was too great and the chances too small.” But he promised to try out.
In his book, Divine Appointments , Erwin McManus says that most of us are what he calls sideliners. He says that a sideliner is “an observer of life rather than a liver of life.” He argues that most people live vicariously. He says, “We find our romance in You’ve Got Mail, and we fight our battles through William Wallace and Maximus Aurelius.”
Ecclesiastes 11:1 says, “Cast your bread upon the water for after many days you will find it again.” In other words, make a move . Do something about the dream. Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, said, “Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has had an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference.”
Here’s what I know with reasonable confidence. If Jimmy Morris hadn’t tried out for the team, Jimmy Morris would have never made the team. If you don’t apply for the job you’ll never get it. If you don’t submit the manuscript it’ll never get accepted. If you don’t fill out the application it’ll never get approved.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, “There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”
There are two pieces of your personality puzzle that are often overlooked: your tolerance for change and tolerance for risk . Some people have a high threshold and some people have a low threshold. Sociologists have done studies and come up with what they cal” adopter categorizations.” The general population falls into these categories:
2% are innovators
13% are early adopters
34% are early majority
34% are late majority
13% are late adopters
2% are laggards
That means that are half of us are on the balls of our feet ready to move forward--we naturally embrace change and risk. The other half of us are digging in our heels --we naturally resist change and risk.
I’m not sure where you fit on the adopter spectrum, but whether you’re an innovator or a laggard, you’re still called to “throw your bread on the water.” You still have to overcome inertia--the natural tendency to resist a change in motion.
Faith and Foolishness
In the movie, Jimmy Morris says, “It’s going to take a lot more than a few wins for me to make a fool of myself .” In the book, Morris explains that the tryout specifically stated that they were looking for prospects between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four. Jimmy Morris was thirty-five. Morris said, “I figured I’d get laughed out of the stadium.” But he was willing to look foolish. That’s faith. Faith is the willingness to look foolish.
Noah looked foolish building an ark in the desert. Sarah looked foolish buying maternity clothes at ninety. The Israelites looked foolish marching around Jericho blowing trumpets . David looked foolish attacking Goliath with a slingshot. The Wise Men looked foolish following a star to nowhere. Peter looked foolish stepping out of the boat in the middle of lake. And Jesus looked foolish hanging half-naked on a cross.
But that’s faith--a willingness to look foolish. And the results speak for themselves. Noah was saved from the flood. The walls of Jericho came tumbling down. Sarah gave birth to Isaac. David defeated Goliath. The Wise Men found the Messiah. Peter walked on water. And Jesus was raised from the dead.
I Corinthians 1:27 says that “God choose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.” I think the main reason most of us don’t realize our dreams is because we aren’t willing to look foolish. But let me say it like it is: if you aren’t willing to look foolish you are foolish.
Josiah, our one year-old, is going through a major developmental stage right now. He’s just starting to walk. He looks like a drunken sailor. He falls on his tail so much that his diaper doubles as an air bag. But there is something so basic, so fundamental about a baby learning to walk. It’s a microcosm of life. If you aren’t willing to look like a drunken sailor, if you aren’t willing to fall on your tail, you’ll never learn to walk.
Let me make an important distinction, however. There is a difference between foolishness looking foolish and faith looking foolish. If you can’t sing and you go on American Idol you’re going to look foolish because you are foolish. Samuel Johnson said, “Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess.” What I’m saying is this: you need to be willing to look foolish. But make sure it’s because faith.
The Success Syndrome
Another dreambuster is success. That may seem counterintuitive, but sometimes we become successful at the wrong thing and it keeps us from doing the right thing because we don’t want to start all over again. We think we have too much to lose. Erwin McManus says, “The greatest danger that success brings, aside from arrogance, is the fear of losing what has been gained.” I can’t change majors or change jobs because I’ve taken too many classes or climbed too many rungs on the ladder. That’s the trap the rich young ruler fell into. Jesus challenged him to give what he had to the poor. Luke 18:23 says, “He became very sad because he was a man of great wealth.” He felt like he had everything to lose when the truth is he had everything to gain. Jesus presented him with the opportunity of a lifetime--the opportunity to follow him.
There are two success traps many people fall into. The first is called “the parallel path “ by Gregg Levoy. He says, “You become an art critic rather than an artist, a schoolteacher rather than a parent , a reporter rather than a novelist.” Sometimes success substitutes for our real dream --we live a parallel path.
Another trap is what Dr. Stephen Berglas calls “encore anxiety.” It’s the fear of not being able to live up to or repeat a previous success. And that keeps us from trying again. So we play it safe like the unfaithful steward in the parable of the talents.
The poet Rilke said the purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things. That is one of the principles in the parable of the talents. Jesus says, “You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things."God wants to lead us on to bigger and better things. He wants to defeat us with greater and greater things! But we have to be faithful with the small things!
We aren’t called to play it safe. Erwin McManus says, “To live outside God’s will puts us in danger, but to live in God’s will makes us dangerous.” What a great distinction. “When we begin to seize our divine moments, we do not begin to live risk-free, but instead become free to risk.”
The Sea of Uncertainty
I’ve found that my spiritual life goes through different seasons when God is trying to do different things in my life. If I had to summarize the season I’m just coming out of, I’d call it a season of uncertainty. In January I cast the vision for launching NCC’s second location in September ‘03. Here’s what I wrote in my journal the day after that State of the Church message. “Once I cast the vision for the launch I had this feeling like, ‘ Wow, we really need to do this now.’ It was that scary, uneasy feeling that you get every time you try something you’ve never done before.”
The uncertainty was unsettling. Then I read something that Andy Stanley wrote in his book The Next Generation Leader. This one statement really revolutionized my perspective on life and leadership. He wrote, “There will always be an element of uncertainty .” It doesn’t matter what decision you’re making or situation you’re facing, you rarely have absolute certainty. Stanley said, “Generally speaking, you are probably never going to be more than 80 percent certain . Waiting for greater certainty may cause you to miss an opportunity.”
We all like certainty-- 100% money-back guarantees. But here’s the thing: there is no such thing as risk-free or fail-proof faith. During our Boy Meets Girl series I said there is no such thing as relationships without complications. You can’t have one without the other. In the same sense, there is no such thing as dreams without uncertainty . You can’t have one without the other.
Ecclesiastes 11:4 says, “Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap.” In other words, if you’re waiting for perfect conditions you’ll never do anything . Erwin McManus says, “Don’t wait for God to remove all uncertainty. Realize He may actually increase uncertainty and leverage all odds against you, just so that you know that in the end that it wasn’t your gifts but His power through your gifts that fulfilled His purpose in your life.”
There is a time to be cautious and a time to throw caution to the wind. And it takes an awful lot of discernment to know when to do which. But here’s what I know for sure, if you wait for certainty you’ll never do anything. Andy Stanley says, “Uncertainty actually increases with increased leadership responsibility. The more responsibility you assume as a leader, the more uncertainty you will be expected to manage. The cost of success as a leader is greater uncertainty, not less.”
Gregg Levoy says that “saying yes” to your dream puts you on a path that “half of yourself thinks doesn’t make sense, and the other half knows your life doesn’t make sense without.”
I think we can get too linear and too logical when it comes to dreams. You can analyze a dream to death. Deena Metzger says, “Keep away from saying, ‘I’ll do X so that Y will happen.’ Cause-and-Effect is the narrowest way of seeing the world . Just offer yourself, ‘ Thy will be done ,’ without knowing the outcome.”
Destination Disease
Jimmy Morris writes about his big break this way, “The time was 10:30 PM, on Friday, September 17, 1999. The moment that was never going to come was now here.” Morris got called up to the Majors!
Here’s a word of caution. Don’t get so caught up in the pursuit of your dream that you fail to enjoy the process! In his book, The Success Journey , John Maxwell says, “Many people have what I call ‘destination disease.’ They believe that if they can arrive somewhere --attain a position, accomplish a goal, or have a relationship with the right person-- they will be successful.” The truth is that God is a lot more concerned with the process. And the joy is in the journey .
Oswald Chamber said, “We must never put our dreams of success as God’s purpose for us. The question of getting to a particular end is a mere incident. What we call the process, God calls the end. His purpose is that I depend on Him and on His power now. God is not working toward a particular finish: His end is the process-- that I see Him walking on the waves, no shore in sight, no success, no goal, just the absolute certainty that it is all right because I see Him walking on the sea. It is the process, not the end, which is glorifying to God.”
Death’s Door
I love the ending of the book even more than the movie. Jimmy Morris suffered an elbow injury in his second season in the Majors. He writes, “You might call that depressing. I don’t. I think it was God’s hand steering me again to the right place. The right place was home.” Morris’ marriage was falling apart. Morris said, “The injury led to a flight home to my wife four months earlier than if I’d played the whole season. Another four months apart would have left us with nothing to repair and no desire to try.”
Don’t sacrifice your family in pursuit of the dream. It’s not worth it.
The last paragraph of The Rookie says, “I sometimes imagine myself at death’s door, sorting through memories like souvenirs. I know I’ll remember the long road to my dream and all the turns and obstacles along the way. I’ll remember standing on a major-league mound and striking out Royce Clayton and Mo Vaughn and Frank Thomas, and I’ll smile because I won’t have to regret losing my wife and family to a dream that I learned didn’t mean as much to me as they did.”
The Country of Lost Freshness
At the beginning of the movie, Coach Morris gives his players a pep talk. He says, “If you don’t have dreams, you don’t have anything.” That’s a pretty good paraphrase of Proverbs 29:18. “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” The word “perish” means “to rot.” If you don’t have vision, there is nothing to stop the process of decay . But the opposite is true as well. Vision is a preservative. It keeps us from getting old.
Henry James called the passage of years a slow, reluctant march into enemy country. He called the enemy country “the country of the lost freshness.” Henry James theorized that if a person never lost their freshness they would never grow old . I find that fascinating in light of Proverbs 29:18. Dreams keep us young --whether we’re thirty-five like Jimmy Morris or eighty-five like Caleb.
Caleb was one of twelve spies who explored the Promise Land and one of two that brought back a positive report. The Israelites didn’t listen to Caleb’s advice and wandered aimlessly for forty years as a result. In Joshua 14, Caleb is an octogenarian. He says, “Here I am today, eight-five years old! I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out: I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then.” And then you can hear forty-five years of pent-up conviction in his voice. “Now give me this hill country that the Lord promised me that day.” Caleb doesn’t want Joshua to give him a settled piece of property. He’s not ready to retire! He wants the hill country--the land of giants.
Let me ask you a question: do you know very many people who are as strong and as vigorous at eighty-five as they were at forty-five ? How can Caleb be “as strong” and “as vigorous” after wandering in the wilderness for forty years? The answer is simple: the vision of possessing the Promise Land never died. And that vision kept him young. It kept him fresh. It was a preservative. It didn’t allow him to get old.
Harriet Doerr says, “One of the best things about aging is being able to watch imagination overtake memory.” She knows where of she speaks. Harriet dreamed of going to college, but money then marriage then kids kept her from going. But the dream never died. Not only did she graduate from Stanford University with a BA. She did it at sixty-seven years of age. Harriet didn’t stop there. She dreamed of writing a book. Her first book, Stones for Ibarra, was published when she was seventy-four years old.
Ashley Montague, the anthropologist, said, “I want to die young at a ripe old age.” That’s what dreams will do for you! Here is the big idea: you start dying when you have nothing worth living for and you start living when you have something worth dying for.
The Ancient Dream
In the preface to his book, Jimmy Morris talks about all the autograph-seekers and letter-writers who were inspired by his story. He said, “None of it had to do with baseball. These people were doctors and janitors, executives and retirees. I greeted the smiles of seventy-year-old men as they asked for my autograph, and I read the words of letter writers whom I’d inspired to chase an ancient dream.” That’s what happens when we come to Christ. We start dreaming again. We rediscover the “ancient dream “ that the Ancient of Days has for us.
Last week’s evotional talked about the spiritual chain reaction that happens the moment we put our faith in Christ. One derivative of that decision is the infilling of the Holy Spirit. Acts
2:17 says, “I will pour out my spirit on all people your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.” In other words, seeing visions and dreaming dreams is a spiritual thing. It is the supernatural spin-off of being filled with the Holy Spirit.
One of the fundamental mistakes a lot of Christians make in their approach to life is playing not to lose . We try to be good by not doing anything bad, but as Dallas Willard says, “Not going to London or Atlanta is a poor plan for going to New York.” Here’s the thing: goodness is not the absence of badness. Erwin McManus says, “The great tragedy is not the sins we commit, but the life we fail to live.” I like the way John Maxwell puts it. “Potential is God’s gift to us. What we do with it is our gift to God.” God doesn’t just want to eliminate sin from our lives. He also wants to help us rediscover the ancient dream--the thing we can live for and die for.
The Law of Inertia
If you’re going to rediscover your dream, there are some obstacles you need to overcome. The biggest dreambuster is inertia. The main reason most dreams stay dreams is because we never do anything about them. It’s the law of inertia --"the tendency of anything to resist a change in its motion.” It’s a lot easier to keep on doing what your doing than to change direction and pursue a dream.
One of my favorite scenes in the movie is the locker room scene where each player shakes Jimmy Morris’ hand and says, “It’s your turn, Coach.” Jimmy Morris would have never pursued his dream if his players hadn’t pushed him. In the book, Jimmy Morris said, “No one my age who’d been out of baseball ten years had ever played in the majors. It was impossible . The risk was too great and the chances too small.” But he promised to try out.
In his book, Divine Appointments , Erwin McManus says that most of us are what he calls sideliners. He says that a sideliner is “an observer of life rather than a liver of life.” He argues that most people live vicariously. He says, “We find our romance in You’ve Got Mail, and we fight our battles through William Wallace and Maximus Aurelius.”
Ecclesiastes 11:1 says, “Cast your bread upon the water for after many days you will find it again.” In other words, make a move . Do something about the dream. Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, said, “Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has had an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference.”
Here’s what I know with reasonable confidence. If Jimmy Morris hadn’t tried out for the team, Jimmy Morris would have never made the team. If you don’t apply for the job you’ll never get it. If you don’t submit the manuscript it’ll never get accepted. If you don’t fill out the application it’ll never get approved.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, “There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”
There are two pieces of your personality puzzle that are often overlooked: your tolerance for change and tolerance for risk . Some people have a high threshold and some people have a low threshold. Sociologists have done studies and come up with what they cal” adopter categorizations.” The general population falls into these categories:
2% are innovators
13% are early adopters
34% are early majority
34% are late majority
13% are late adopters
2% are laggards
That means that are half of us are on the balls of our feet ready to move forward--we naturally embrace change and risk. The other half of us are digging in our heels --we naturally resist change and risk.
I’m not sure where you fit on the adopter spectrum, but whether you’re an innovator or a laggard, you’re still called to “throw your bread on the water.” You still have to overcome inertia--the natural tendency to resist a change in motion.
Faith and Foolishness
In the movie, Jimmy Morris says, “It’s going to take a lot more than a few wins for me to make a fool of myself .” In the book, Morris explains that the tryout specifically stated that they were looking for prospects between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four. Jimmy Morris was thirty-five. Morris said, “I figured I’d get laughed out of the stadium.” But he was willing to look foolish. That’s faith. Faith is the willingness to look foolish.
Noah looked foolish building an ark in the desert. Sarah looked foolish buying maternity clothes at ninety. The Israelites looked foolish marching around Jericho blowing trumpets . David looked foolish attacking Goliath with a slingshot. The Wise Men looked foolish following a star to nowhere. Peter looked foolish stepping out of the boat in the middle of lake. And Jesus looked foolish hanging half-naked on a cross.
But that’s faith--a willingness to look foolish. And the results speak for themselves. Noah was saved from the flood. The walls of Jericho came tumbling down. Sarah gave birth to Isaac. David defeated Goliath. The Wise Men found the Messiah. Peter walked on water. And Jesus was raised from the dead.
I Corinthians 1:27 says that “God choose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.” I think the main reason most of us don’t realize our dreams is because we aren’t willing to look foolish. But let me say it like it is: if you aren’t willing to look foolish you are foolish.
Josiah, our one year-old, is going through a major developmental stage right now. He’s just starting to walk. He looks like a drunken sailor. He falls on his tail so much that his diaper doubles as an air bag. But there is something so basic, so fundamental about a baby learning to walk. It’s a microcosm of life. If you aren’t willing to look like a drunken sailor, if you aren’t willing to fall on your tail, you’ll never learn to walk.
Let me make an important distinction, however. There is a difference between foolishness looking foolish and faith looking foolish. If you can’t sing and you go on American Idol you’re going to look foolish because you are foolish. Samuel Johnson said, “Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess.” What I’m saying is this: you need to be willing to look foolish. But make sure it’s because faith.
The Success Syndrome
Another dreambuster is success. That may seem counterintuitive, but sometimes we become successful at the wrong thing and it keeps us from doing the right thing because we don’t want to start all over again. We think we have too much to lose. Erwin McManus says, “The greatest danger that success brings, aside from arrogance, is the fear of losing what has been gained.” I can’t change majors or change jobs because I’ve taken too many classes or climbed too many rungs on the ladder. That’s the trap the rich young ruler fell into. Jesus challenged him to give what he had to the poor. Luke 18:23 says, “He became very sad because he was a man of great wealth.” He felt like he had everything to lose when the truth is he had everything to gain. Jesus presented him with the opportunity of a lifetime--the opportunity to follow him.
There are two success traps many people fall into. The first is called “the parallel path “ by Gregg Levoy. He says, “You become an art critic rather than an artist, a schoolteacher rather than a parent , a reporter rather than a novelist.” Sometimes success substitutes for our real dream --we live a parallel path.
Another trap is what Dr. Stephen Berglas calls “encore anxiety.” It’s the fear of not being able to live up to or repeat a previous success. And that keeps us from trying again. So we play it safe like the unfaithful steward in the parable of the talents.
The poet Rilke said the purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things. That is one of the principles in the parable of the talents. Jesus says, “You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things."God wants to lead us on to bigger and better things. He wants to defeat us with greater and greater things! But we have to be faithful with the small things!
We aren’t called to play it safe. Erwin McManus says, “To live outside God’s will puts us in danger, but to live in God’s will makes us dangerous.” What a great distinction. “When we begin to seize our divine moments, we do not begin to live risk-free, but instead become free to risk.”
The Sea of Uncertainty
I’ve found that my spiritual life goes through different seasons when God is trying to do different things in my life. If I had to summarize the season I’m just coming out of, I’d call it a season of uncertainty. In January I cast the vision for launching NCC’s second location in September ‘03. Here’s what I wrote in my journal the day after that State of the Church message. “Once I cast the vision for the launch I had this feeling like, ‘ Wow, we really need to do this now.’ It was that scary, uneasy feeling that you get every time you try something you’ve never done before.”
The uncertainty was unsettling. Then I read something that Andy Stanley wrote in his book The Next Generation Leader. This one statement really revolutionized my perspective on life and leadership. He wrote, “There will always be an element of uncertainty .” It doesn’t matter what decision you’re making or situation you’re facing, you rarely have absolute certainty. Stanley said, “Generally speaking, you are probably never going to be more than 80 percent certain . Waiting for greater certainty may cause you to miss an opportunity.”
We all like certainty-- 100% money-back guarantees. But here’s the thing: there is no such thing as risk-free or fail-proof faith. During our Boy Meets Girl series I said there is no such thing as relationships without complications. You can’t have one without the other. In the same sense, there is no such thing as dreams without uncertainty . You can’t have one without the other.
Ecclesiastes 11:4 says, “Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap.” In other words, if you’re waiting for perfect conditions you’ll never do anything . Erwin McManus says, “Don’t wait for God to remove all uncertainty. Realize He may actually increase uncertainty and leverage all odds against you, just so that you know that in the end that it wasn’t your gifts but His power through your gifts that fulfilled His purpose in your life.”
There is a time to be cautious and a time to throw caution to the wind. And it takes an awful lot of discernment to know when to do which. But here’s what I know for sure, if you wait for certainty you’ll never do anything. Andy Stanley says, “Uncertainty actually increases with increased leadership responsibility. The more responsibility you assume as a leader, the more uncertainty you will be expected to manage. The cost of success as a leader is greater uncertainty, not less.”
Gregg Levoy says that “saying yes” to your dream puts you on a path that “half of yourself thinks doesn’t make sense, and the other half knows your life doesn’t make sense without.”
I think we can get too linear and too logical when it comes to dreams. You can analyze a dream to death. Deena Metzger says, “Keep away from saying, ‘I’ll do X so that Y will happen.’ Cause-and-Effect is the narrowest way of seeing the world . Just offer yourself, ‘ Thy will be done ,’ without knowing the outcome.”
Destination Disease
Jimmy Morris writes about his big break this way, “The time was 10:30 PM, on Friday, September 17, 1999. The moment that was never going to come was now here.” Morris got called up to the Majors!
Here’s a word of caution. Don’t get so caught up in the pursuit of your dream that you fail to enjoy the process! In his book, The Success Journey , John Maxwell says, “Many people have what I call ‘destination disease.’ They believe that if they can arrive somewhere --attain a position, accomplish a goal, or have a relationship with the right person-- they will be successful.” The truth is that God is a lot more concerned with the process. And the joy is in the journey .
Oswald Chamber said, “We must never put our dreams of success as God’s purpose for us. The question of getting to a particular end is a mere incident. What we call the process, God calls the end. His purpose is that I depend on Him and on His power now. God is not working toward a particular finish: His end is the process-- that I see Him walking on the waves, no shore in sight, no success, no goal, just the absolute certainty that it is all right because I see Him walking on the sea. It is the process, not the end, which is glorifying to God.”
Death’s Door
I love the ending of the book even more than the movie. Jimmy Morris suffered an elbow injury in his second season in the Majors. He writes, “You might call that depressing. I don’t. I think it was God’s hand steering me again to the right place. The right place was home.” Morris’ marriage was falling apart. Morris said, “The injury led to a flight home to my wife four months earlier than if I’d played the whole season. Another four months apart would have left us with nothing to repair and no desire to try.”
Don’t sacrifice your family in pursuit of the dream. It’s not worth it.
The last paragraph of The Rookie says, “I sometimes imagine myself at death’s door, sorting through memories like souvenirs. I know I’ll remember the long road to my dream and all the turns and obstacles along the way. I’ll remember standing on a major-league mound and striking out Royce Clayton and Mo Vaughn and Frank Thomas, and I’ll smile because I won’t have to regret losing my wife and family to a dream that I learned didn’t mean as much to me as they did.”