A friend and I were sitting and chatting while our tween-age children were bowling nearby. A few minutes after their game started, an employee walked over to us and asked if we wanted him to put up the bumpers. He noticed them struggling to keep the balls in the lane and offered the help.
Where were the bumpers when I was kid? No one offered a solution for my gutter balls other than to roll it straighter. Alas, it’s not always that easy.
I thought about that recently when thinking about some challenges and opportunities that both myself and my family have coming up. I don’t want to roll any gutter balls. I want to roll strikes every time. The reality, though, is that I’m human and guaranteed to sometimes miss the target – sometimes by a little and sometimes by a lot.
That’s when I realized that living a life of abiding in Christ is like having the ability to put up the bumpers. It doesn’t mean that everything I do is a strike, but it does mean than when I begin to go off course God offers up bumpers to keep me in my lane. Don’t get me wrong, we will make mistakes and be tested. Just because we don’t get stuck in the gutter doesn’t mean we roll strikes.
Sometimes we have a little slip, get tired, things get heavy, or we get distracted by what’s happening in someone else’s lane and we get a little sideways. If we keep our eyes fixed on Him, we won’t miss. We’re simply going to aim straighter when we’re fixed on Him.
I don’t know about you, but I get really bogged down wondering if I’m doing what God wants me to do. I don’t want to say I worry about it. I mean it doesn’t keep me awake at night. However, I do overthink about it all the time. That brings me to why I’m writing this today. I know I am not the only one who struggles with the fear of making mistakes. Life is difficult enough without adding on the consequences of my own gutter balls.
Friend, let me ease your mind a little bit today by sharing how the Lord comforted me recently when I got hyper-focused on fearing I would mess up. God knows you’re trying. He’ll throw up some bumpers when you get close to the gutter. Galatians 5:16 tells then when we walk in the spirit, we don’t fulfill the lust of the flesh. They don’t co-exist. If we’re living in the spirit and being led by God, we don’t need to worry about missing the target.
God is always and only good. His plans for you and for me are good. We will sometimes miss, but when we are going in the direction that God has asked us to go, we will hit the bumpers and bounce back. Sometimes it’s like hitting a 7-10 split – God might only need us to hit the 7 then it does the work.
One of my favorite verses of Scripture is Jeremiah 29:11 (NKJV), “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Our future is safe in Him. We shortchange ourselves stopping at verse 11 because it fits well on a t-shirt or in an Instagram frame.
If we read on in verses 12-14, God says when we pray, He will listen. When we seek Him with all our hearts, we will find Him. He will bring us back from captivity. Friends, He is the bumper, the guardrail, the safety net, the buoy, the lifeline when we are headed for the gutters. We can trust Him.
God loves us because He is good not because we played a perfect game and didn’t make mistakes. We all fall short. He has already accounted for that. He sent Christ to rescue us. You are free from the burden of needing to be perfect and make all the correct decisions. Stay focused on Him, and He’ll put the bumpers up when they’re needed.
Know this friends, in case you’ve slipped or lose focus in a frame later in the game, there’s no gutter He can’t pull you out of.
Photo credit: Ella Christenson/Unsplash
