Sunday Snippets from the Ballpark

Today was the best Sunday!  This is where we had church:

That's right, we had church at the baseball park.  Ever see the movie Bull Durham?  That ballpark became our sanctuary today.

It was packed!  I think the official numbers were over 7,000 in attendance.

I had been kind of nervous all week that I would have no one to sit with.  Most of my church friends were volunteering for the event, but I really just wanted to go and hear the message and have a Sunday off from volunteering.  I was praying, Lord please let some of my friends come!  I really don't want to sit by myself.  God answered my prayers and I had 4 friends to ride with and sit with today!

There were t-shirts shot into the audience, campus pastors sumo wrestling, and $1 concessions.  It was a great worship experience and a great message.  The one quote that stood out to me from the sermon was...

"A lot of people are going to miss heaven by 18"- the distance between a belief in the head and a belief in the heart."

After the sermon there was an opportunity for those who had never been baptized to publicly declare their faith in Jesus and be baptized.  I was a little uncomfortable at first because I knew one of the friends I brought with me hated things like this...the mass baptism, alter call, whatever you want to call it.  Another friend I was sitting with was from my bible study and she had never been baptized as an adult and I told her it would be really cool to do it today.  Not many people can say they have been baptized on a baseball field.  She wanted to wait though.  Well, my other friend decided she wanted to be baptized!  I was shocked!  And since she was going to do it, my bible study friend decided to go ahead and do it too!  Praise God!  I was crying and I wasn't even the one being baptized!  Both of them like me had been baptized as infants, but this was their public deceleration of their faith in Christ.  It was truly incredible to get to experience that with them!

It made me think back to my own baptism and how that was the first time I really did something I absolutely did not want to do, but I knew that God wanted me to do.  That one act led to such a deeper trust and faith in Him and I never, ever doubted where I stood with Him again.  Since then I have had the trust and faith in Him to let Him take the lead on so many other areas of my life.  I am so incredibly happy for my friends to have that too!

It also reminded me of this quote:

“As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.” 

I had this quote written on my whiteboard for weeks at work.  See I still struggle with sharing my faith.  For years I thought this is something so personal.  It's just between me and God.  I get uncomfortable talking about it, I still hate praying out loud, but I have been trying to change that.  There is no reason you should have to hide it for fear of how you will look or if you are going to offend someone.

That was never more evident to me than it was today.  If my one friend would not have had the courage to stand up and say I want to do this, let her light shine, then the other wouldn't have either.  She unconsciously gave her permission to let her light shine too!  It was truly God at work!


So today...Go!  Let your light shine!!