In whose hands does your life sit?
An NFL football is just a football until it’s inflated and in the right hands. If you put a NFL football in my hands, it will never see its full potential. But put a football in Tom Brady’s hands and that football is going to cut through the air in a tight, perfect spiral into the arms of a waiting receiver. That’s the power of unleashing the purpose of the football. Deflated or in the wrong hands, it’s void of purpose and misused.
The New England Patriots, throughout what’s become known as Deflategate, found this out the hard way. All NFL footballs have to be inflated within a specific pressure range. Each is measured before the games, but in 2016, one New England Patriot football was found to be under inflated. There were advantages to this. An under inflated ball at the right gauge is easier to handle, grip and even throw, particularly for the quarterback.
The disadvantage is the penalty for thwarting the footballs true purpose. That being a four game suspension for suspected deflater Tom Brady and a million dollar fine for the Patriots, amongst other consequences. Molded and manipulated by the hands of cheaters, that under inflated NFL football was no longer able to function the way it was designed to function in an NFL game. It lost all integrity.
How can we live out our purpose if we continue to live deflated and held by the hands of the world, molded and manipulated by others? We need to put ourselves in the hands of a master who will fill us up to the right gauge and who knows how we are to be handled, shaped and utilized to see our full potential with integrity.
Ephesians 2:10 and says that we are “God's workmanship, crafted in Christ Jesus to do good works which he prepared in advance for us to do.”
That's a specific purpose. And just like an NFL football has a specific purpose, so do we. And everyday we are faced with a decision. Will we allow ourselves to be held by a master of integrity with our best interests at heart, who is neither self-seeking nor greedy, or will we entrust ourselves to cheaters lacking integrity and an interest in our wellbeing? We need to decide today into whose hands we will places our lives.
The Lord’s hands, our own hands, or the hands of others?