Keep your head up...

One of the phrases that I heard over and over again when I was playing baseball as a kid was, "keep your head up".

Basically, what my coaches were telling me was to "stay focused", "stay aware of what's going on", "be ready"!

In baseball, if you keep your head down, you could end up with a pretty bad bruise, a black eye, and a really bad headache. Making sure that you are aware and ready to act is essential for success in the game.

The same thing is true for our Christian journey.

It is kind of funny, but when it comes to working hard and getting things done, we say the opposite. If we have a really busy day, we might even say, "Wow! I was really 'heads down' today"!

The idea is that, in order to plow through the tremendous amounts of work, we have to ignore the outside world and just keep plowing!

While this may be true in certain seasons of our lives, I believe that living that way day after day can lead to some not-so-great habits. One of which is the subject of this blog.

So many of us today are plowing through life with our heads down. We are so busy that there is rarely time to look up. But what happens when we develop the habit of not looking up?

The next time you are outside, try this exercise. Stand on one side of your yard and pick a point on the other side, a significant distance away. Now look down and stare at your feet for two minutes. Then, without looking up, and starring only at your feet, walk to your chosen destination.

If you stick strictly to the rules of the exercise, you will most likely find that you will miss your target.

Now go back to where you began. Choose your target again, and this time don't look down. Was there a difference? Did you reach your destination?

One last time. Begin again, and this time, look down a few times in your journey to your chosen point. What happened? You were able to not only reach your destination, but you were able to avoid any obstacles along the way.

So often, we spend our days in tireless, heads-down activities, and our evenings in exhausted recuperation. Years later we look up and ask ourselves, "Where am I"?

Even more importantly, we apply the same habits to our journey with Jesus. We allow life to keep us so busy that we rarely have time to discover God's Word and His plan for our daily lives. We just accept traditions as truth and opinions as gospel. Years pass, and a lot of hard work has been done, and we realize that what we thought was right, may be off completely, and we have missed the target.

This is why, as a believer, it is important to "keep your head up". Stay focused, be aware of what is going on around you, keep your head in the game.

We do this by maintaining a steady diet of God's Word (reading the Bible, listening to sound teaching, having conversations with others about our faith, etc.).

We increase the length and sincerity of our prayer life. not just offering recited prayers, but engaging in a meaningful conversation with our creator that involves talking AND listening.

We keep up on the needs of other believers and stay available to help whenever possible.

Most importantly, we know God's Word for ourselves. Through study and conversations, we discover the Truth for ourselves. We don't make up our own truth, but truly discover THE Truth for ourselves and live it.

There will be seasons of "heads down" hard work, but these should not outnumber our seasons of heads-up discovery and focus that keep us on target for reaching our destination.

I love the way the Message Bible shows us this truth in Romans 12:2:

"Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. "

There is so much to learn and do for the Kingdom. Make an effort to stay in the game by forming the habit of keeping your head up!