Tales From The Bullpen by Jared Cudd

I’m not sure the exact direction of this post. This is something that has been on my mind a lot lately and it’s very broad and scattered. But I am going to do my best to make it make sense for the people that are reading it. Things always make sense in our own mind. So no matter how I word something or whether I verbalize or don’t verbalize something, I know my own thought process. But sometimes we don’t relay information to other people in a way that they can understand it, but here it goes!

We live in a world that is changing every day. I know people say a lot, “Well back when I was young”, or “Back in the day”, or phrases like that. We’ve all heard those phrases and also probably at some point said them. Things have always changed as time has gone on. But the changes that are happening now are not only different, but scary at times. We live in a time when we have to be cautious everywhere we go. We have to pay attention no matter where we are at because there is a lot of evil around us. Not that there hasn’t been evil before, but it seems to be getting more prevalent every day. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe it is my imagination. Maybe it is that there is more media coverage and that makes it seem more of an issue. Maybe it is that I am older and pay more attention to it. I don’t know for sure. But I know I am more cautious now than ever before. When we go in public I am more on alert now. I am more concerned with having to protect my family. I worry every day about protecting my kids not only from evil in public but also from all the crazy things that kids are exposed to earlier than I was. That is definitely something that I can say is different than when I was a kid. Kid’s are exposed to and more knowledgable about certain things now at a much earlier age than I was when I was growing up. I have a responsibility to raise my children in a Christian way. Although we cannot keep them from being exposed to evil, we have to be able to help them understand what goes against God’s word and try to keep them on the right path.

With all of that being said, we have to make sure we know where we will spend eternity. The only way to be sure of that is to follow exactly what God says to do. Jesus says in Matthew 7:21, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” That scripture speaks volumes to me. It makes me think a lot about what I do on a daily basis. Jesus is more concerned with our walk, not our talk. Our relationship with God is so important. We have to have that personal relationship with him. Talking about it is not enough. That is hard to do sometimes. We’ve all had ups and downs in our Christian life, but God never gives up on us. We need to work hard to seek that deep relationship with him. I have heard people say that when they have gone through life changing events that is when they developed that relationship with God they had been wanting for a long time. That is when they got so close to him that they found peace they never knew they could have. That is when their life changed. That is when they figured out what it meant to have a truly deep relationship with God. That is when they figured out how to pray to God like they were talking to a friend. That is the type of relationship we should all seek. That is what we should all want in a relationship with God. It is at that point that our relationship with him is so strong that we can surrender everything to him and have that peace that only He can provide.

All of this makes me think about being prepared when Jesus returns. Like I said last week, He is coming back. We don’t know when, but it will happen and we need to be ready. “We are either going to be born once and die twice, or be born twice and die once.” I have heard that quote before and I don’t even know who to credit for saying it, but it definitely makes me think. It makes me really want to focus on what God wants from us. God wants us to go and share the Gospel with others. He wants us to go into the world and bring others to Christ. That should be what we set out each day to do. That doesn’t mean that we go out and preach every day. We can do that by how we live our lives and take advantage of the opportunities we have to tell others the story of Jesus. We all have different talents from God and it is our responsibility to use those talents to glorify God. Sometimes that is uncomfortable for us to do. Think about times when you have had the chance to share God with others. Did you pass on it? Were you afraid to take advantage of that opportunity because you weren’t sure enough of yourself as a Christian? Were you afraid to take advantage of that opportunity because you weren’t sure what they would think of you? I am guilty of both of these reasons in the past. I look back and wonder how many chances I missed because of these reasons or maybe others too. The thing about sharing the Gospel with others is that we have to be looking for those opportunities. We have to be able to identify those chances we get and take advantage of them.

I heard Phil Robertson say one time when he was talking about spreading the gospel to others, “You have to love the human race more than you fear them. ” He went on to talk about how if we let fear and doubt creep into our mind because we fear what they might think or what they might do, then we will never go out and spread the Good News. He told the story one time about a man who called to order a duck call. This was a long time ago before their time on Duck Dynasty. This is when they just ran their duck call business and hadn’t became famous yet. In the process of ordering the duck call the man used the Lord’s name in vain multiple times. Finally after several times, Phil ask him why he used the Lord’s name like that when all he was doing was ordering a duck call. The guy said, “Do you have my duck call coming.” Phil responded with, “Sure do”. The guy then hung up. The guy called back ten minutes later and told Phil he had never thought about his language in that way. Phil told the man he was going to die one day and he didn’t understand why the man would talk that way about the only One that could save him from that death. He saw that the guy was from Alabama and invited him to his house in Louisiana to hear the Good News about Jesus. A couple of week later there was a knock on Phil’s door. It was the guy on the phone a couple of weeks earlier. He said he wanted to hear the story. Phil then told him the story of Jesus and the guy sat in his living room and cried. They spent a long time talking. Later that night he ended up taking the guy to the river to be baptized. About 15 years later Phil was speaking somewhere and ran into the same guy. He was still a faithful follower of Christ. All it took was a guy with the courage to speak up about Jesus.

As we go forward this week, I challenge everyone to look for those opportunities. Look for those ways to spread the Good News to others. We all have different talents from God, but it is our responsibility to use those talents for God. We all have ways that we can spread the word of God to those around us. God has blessed all of us with ways that we can help others. He has given us gifts to further his Kingdom. We just have to figure out what those talents are and have the boldness to use them for Him. Let us all focus this week on how we can spread the word of God to others. We might be the only way that someone hears the story of Jesus. A lot of us were fortunate to grow up in Christian homes where God was a priority. But others are not as fortunate. We might be the person that tells someone else about God for the first time. They may have heard of God before but they might not have ever really been taught the story of Jesus Christ. Mark 16:15 says, “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to all creation.” Let us all look for those opportunities and use our God given talents to further his Kingdom. One thing is for sure and that is that one day we will meet our Maker. My prayer is that everyone will be ready on that day. I hope that I am ready. I hope my family is ready. I hope that I don’t miss an opportunity to help someone else be ready either. I pray that we can all use our talents to further God’s Kingdom. I also pray that we look no further than the Bible to find the courage and the answers on how to do this!!!

This past Thursday, Friday, and Saturday was our annual basketball tournament that our school hosts. It is three days filled with about 12 hours of basketball each day. I watched 24 basketball games in those three days. I watched teams on all different talent levels. I watched players on all different talent levels. I watched coaches and how they handled their teams. I listened to fans. Some were louder than others. Some were louder for their team than others, and some were louder at the referees than others. But as I sat and observed these things, I saw one thing that kept coming back to me that they all had in common. They were all competing. They were competing for something bigger than just themselves. They were all competing for something they believed in. Players can be motivated by different things. They may have different reasons for competing for different things. They may have been competing for their school or community. They may have been competing for their coach. It may have been for their parents or their teammates. Whatever the reason, it was because they wanted to win and they wanted to win for a reason, or maybe a lot of reasons. Perhaps it is just because they don’t like losing. Whatever the case, they competed and played hard to win. The coaches compete and want to win for their players. They also want to win for their school and community. Most coaches played sports and developed a competitive drive during that time. Parents want their children to be successful. They want their child’s school to be successful. They want their community to have things to be proud of. All of these are great reasons to compete. The bottom line is they were doing everything they could to be better than the person on the other side of the gym. It was emotional at times. It got intense at times. There are so many good things to be taken out of sports. There are so many things that sports, or any activity that kids compete in, teach our kids. It teaches them how to win gracefully. It teaches them how to lose gracefully. It teaches them how to be part of a team. It teaches them how to overcome adversity. Good healthy competition is a great thing. It is so fun to watch teams compete against one another because there are so many variables that go into it. But in the end, they all have the same goal. To win!

In life as adults we compete too. We compete at work. We want to be the best employee we can be. We want people to take notice of the job we do. We compete at a lot of things as adults. Sometimes we compete in sports even though we are past our prime. That can also lead to competing with age and getting out of bed the next morning. I guess I thought I would stay young forever. But I told my wife the other day that I am starting to see signs of getting older for the first time. My body says that I am getting older but my mind doesn’t. So that is the problem I have. When I am involved in anything dealing with sports I will still try and go the same speed that I went when I was 18. Now I realize that is a completely different gear than it was over 20 years ago. But, in the moment, I still feel like Michael Jordan or Bo Jackson. It isn’t until a few hours after the fact, or even more the next morning or two, that I realize that Bo and Michael were Bo and Michael for a reason and I am not, nor was I ever. I don’t just get out of bed on those mornings anymore. I literally roll out of bed on those mornings now. The reason being that I am too sore to actually sit up and get out of bed like normal. Then I limp into the bathroom. The only problem is I’m not sure which leg to limp on because they both hurt so bad. So it’s more of a waddle. But anyhow, after several days goes by I get better and by the time the next opportunity rolls around for sporting competition, I forget how bad the last time was. I then repeat the process. The only problem is that now I am older than the last time. The good about it is that it helps keep that competitive spirit alive. I think everyone needs that competitiveness at times. I will discuss why in just a little bit.

We also as adults have unhealthy competition sometimes. It’s like the saying goes, “keeping up with the Jones'”. We get caught up sometimes into thinking as adults that we have to keep up with those around us. We have to have the same things that they have. We have to do the same things they do. We feel like if we don’t people will think differently about us. We feel like people will look down on us if we don’t have or do those things. But in reality that shouldn’t be our motivation. We shouldn’t think that way. Unfortunately, we do though. We get caught up in it. We feel like we have to keep up. If someone looks down on us for things like that, they have an issue not us. We shouldn’t ever feel like we have to keep up with anyone. Possessions and status should not ever be a competition. It is hard not to do though. It is hard not to want to outdo others. We have a society that tells us we need to. Society tells us that it will improve our life. It will make us more popular. It will make us more relative with those around us. It will improve our status. There are so many things that society and the world tell us will happen if we work hard to achieve these things. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with having these things in our life, that should not be our competition as adults.

Our main competition as adults should be with ourselves. We should compete each day to be more Christlike. We should compete with ourselves to improve on that each day. I have talked about in earlier post that this new year my goal is about being better. That is what this is about. It is about being a better Christian every day. Make today more Christlike than yesterday. I feel like all that competition in the previous years can help prepare us for this competition. Do we work as hard at being more Christlike as we do at our status. Do we compete at the Christian life as hard as we did when we played sports? Do we compete as hard at making sure people see Jesus through us as we do competing with the other fans at our kids’ sporting events? I know sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I get so caught up in the world’s competitions that I lose sight of the competition I should have within myself to be a better Christian daily.

I remember in high school there was a group of guys and all we wanted to do was play baseball. We worked hard at it. When we had free time we were working on it. We went and hit. We went and played catch. If we didn’t have someone else to go with us, which was rare, we went by ourselves. We had a burning desire to be the best we could be. We didn’t win every game, but we had prepared hard enough that we thought we would. We had ups and downs and we worked hard to bounce back from the downs. We didn’t want anyone else to get the best of us. We didn’t want anyone to say they outplayed or outworked us. We didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of beating us. We worked hard as individuals and as a team. What we did as individuals just made us better as a team. We were determined not to let anyone stand in our way of achieving our ultimate goal which was to win a State Championship. We played fall and spring baseball since we didn’t play football. So in my 4 years of HS baseball we played 8 seasons. We made the State Tournament 6 of those 8 seasons. The problem for us was that the first 5 times we made it there, it ended in defeat either in the first or second round. Our senior year we were more determined than ever. We realized that this was it. We wouldn’t have another chance after this one. We made it to the finals that year which was something we hadn’t ever done. This group hadn’t won their first two games before. I remember it like it was yesterday. That Saturday afternoon we were finally crowned State Champions!!! What a feeling it was. We had reached the pinnacle of class B baseball in Oklahoma. We finished on top. All that individual work and team work we had put in paid off. We had reached our goal. I think of that as being like life. We work as individuals and together as Christians to reach our ultimate goal which is to hear those words, “Well done, thy good and faithful servant” and lead others there too. As a HS baseball player that was what I focused a lot of my time and energy on. As an adult, that focus and determination has shifted to being more Christlike. Just like the first 5 times we made the State Tournament, there will be ups and downs in life. We just have to keep working hard to be the best we can be and work hard to make those around us better as well.

Here’s another question to ponder. Do we work as hard at competing against satan every day as we do that other person at work or that neighbor we have on our block who has that brand new vehicle? All of these things, if given too much of our attention can consume our lives. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with working on moving up in your job. There is nothing wrong with having a new vehicle or having the best yard on the block, or going on vacations. These things are great. But if they begin to take over our lives and be our main focus we have lost focus of what should be important in our lives. I hope that I work as hard as an adult to conquer satan as I did trying to conquer HS baseball opponents. I hope that I work individually and with other Christians to make this world a better place.

I challenge everyone this week to examine our lives. See where our competition lies. See if we are competing to overcome satan or the neighbors. Which are we more concerned with? Are we competing internally to be a better Christian today than we were yesterday? Are we going to compete with ourselves when we wake up in the morning to be more Christlike than we were yesterday? There comes a point in life when we can’t compete at some things anymore. There will come a time when you can’t play baseball or basketball competitively anymore. There will come a time when we can’t show animals anymore or compete in music contest anymore. All of those things will end. But, just as all those teams competed this weekend in our tournament, those things if used in the right way can prepare us to have that competitive drive to be the best Christian we can be. It can prepare us to compete with ourselves to be better than we were the day before. Those kids this week laid it all on the line for something they believed in. The believed in their team, coaches, school, community, parents, or whatever else it may have been. Are we willing to lay it all on the line for a God we truly believe in? My prayer for everyone is that competitive desire to be Christlike never goes away and that everyday when we wake up we compete to be better than the day before! We compete to win the Christian life!

As 2020 begins I have thought this week about a lot of things. It feels like as the new year starts each year we kind of have a clean slate and a new start. To me each new year feels like a fresh start in a lot of ways. Some things remain the same, but with some things I feel like I get a chance to start new and fresh. I talked last week about being better. One thing I want to be better at this year is being appreciative of how fortunate I am to not only have the life I have, but the God I have as well. I just want to remember to take the time to tell Him “Thank You”. Something happened this week that reinforced that idea more than I could have imagined.

Thursday evening my wife and I were by ourselves coming back from Weatherford. We had been to some friends’ house at Hydro and then went through Weatherford to run an errand. We were on I40 about 10:30 PM on the way home when something happened that opened my eyes to this very idea of being appreciative and thankful. As we approached our exit there was a semi parked on the shoulder on the right side of our lanes. To the right of the semi was a vehicle parked in the ditch. Both of them had their lights on and were just sitting there. We didn’t think much about it. Normally I would, like everyone else, pull into the left lane to avoid coming too close to the semi. But we were literally right at our exit. So I decided to stay in the right lane so I didn’t have to change lanes twice that quick with other people behind us. As we got close to the semi we started running over glass, part of a tire, a fender, and several other things that I couldn’t identify. It startled me that we were running over things but not near as much as what I saw next. As we got to the semi, I looked to the left and I saw a car that had been demolished in a wreck. It honestly made me sick to my stomach when I saw that car. We could still smell the burning rubber from the tires. The scary thing about the car was there was no lights on it. They had been knocked out and the car was sideways in the left lane. I immediately thought about how if we had switched lanes we would have hit the car and the cars behind us would have hit us and then several other cars would have been effected. It could have been an even worse deal for so many people. As we got off the interstate at our exit I thought that I needed to go back and help, even though I was not sure what I could do to help the situation. Since it had just happened there was no way to stop traffic and could be a really dangerous situation to anyone in that area. About the time I slowed down and was deciding what to do about it I looked up and saw emergency vehicles coming and realized at that point I would just be in the way. I did the best thing I could do at that time which was pray. I prayed to God that no one would lose their life in that wreck. I wasn’t sure that was going to be the case based on the condition of the car, but I prayed that God would take care of those involved. I also thanked him that we had made the decision to not change lanes and that we had not been there just probably mere seconds before this because that could have been us. But at that point I just prayed to God to place his hands on that situation and protect those people.

On the way home Kristin and I talked about what happened after it all processed. We talked about the fact that we weren’t sure what all we ran over. We didn’t see any people anywhere at the scene so we didn’t know if they were in the vehicles or ejected. We had no idea as to the extent of what happened but we just prayed. Once we got home we parked my truck and got out. To tell you how fresh the wreck was when we came up on it, when we got out of the truck we realized that my truck was covered in oil that was spraying from the car in the road. So at 11:00 at night while it was 40 degrees we were at the car wash, washing the oil off of my truck. We did have the whole place to ourselves though. We later found out that the car got on I40 going the wrong way and hit the semi head on. But luckily, by the grace of God, there were no fatalities in accident. All the people involved survived. We all know of situations where this is not the case. It is so heart breaking when things like that happen. Fortunately in this case all lives were spared.

That is what made me think about how fortunate we are. This whole situation made me think a lot. It’s been on my mind for 3 days now. We started this holiday season back in November talking about being thankful and I want to finish the holiday season with the same idea in mind. I take for granted all the time how fortunate I am for so many reasons. We all have stories like the one I just told that hit home for us and moments that happen to us that make us think about these things in a more serious light. We can choose to focus on the negative in those instances or we can focus on how we can use those things to be better at whatever aspect of life that situation deals with and find the positive in those situations. This incident made made me think about how thankful I am for the things in my life that bless me daily. I have a wonderful family and a wonderful set of friends that I can’t imagine doing this life without. As I talked about a little bit last week, we spent a few days in Grapevine, TX with our kids for Christmas. We were just miles away from the church shooting in Dallas last week as well. That made me do a lot of thinking too, which is a story for another day. But as I worked on my patience all week while we were down there, there was really only one time that I got upset, which is remarkable for me if you know my patience from the past. That one time I got upset was with Kristin when she started messing with the GPS on my phone while we were less than a mile from an exit. Somehow through all those shenanigans the app I was using for directions got closed and I missed my exit. In the midst of all of that and me trying to quickly find out how to get back to where I needed to go in heavy Dallas traffic, she drops my phone and delays the process even longer while she looks for it in the floorboard. Although she found the situation comical and ludicrous that I was getting a little testy with her in that traffic, this spat lasted only a short time and minimal sarcastic or rude comments were said by either party and we went on about our day. I even stayed calm when she tried to take advantage of my new viewpoint of when I feel she is in a store too long. There was a time or two the last week or so that she really stretched that out and tested me. Kristin even had a friend, a pretty ornery friend at that, ask her while she was talking to her in the store if I was in the car. I know she was wanting to test me out and talk to Kristin for awhile. But I was in the store, just in a different location. So that ornery little friend didn’t get to test me that time. But the beauty of this blog is that it holds me accountable. I don’t want her pointing out my flaws or that I didn’t follow what I had been writing about. So I was able to keep my mouth shut during those times she tested me.

It kind of stinks that my kids are getting older. They are growing up way too fast. But, there are some perks to it too. They are much better travelers now. They don’t fight quite as much. They aren’t quite as loud, most of the time. Also, their bladders have obviously grown because we don’t have to stop every 30 minutes now. They probably like that too because I no longer dehydrate them when we travel. We used to start that process the night before. If we were headed on a long road trip, the night before we started scaling back on our liquid intake so that we could make it to our destination in record time due to the few number of stops that we made. It’s a guy thing. We like to brag about the awesome time we make when we travel. But that can only be achieved by being as efficient as the children allow. But now, we can be a little more relaxed on that practice. All these little silly things I am thankful for though. I am so appreciative that God has blessed me with these people and these memories. I’m even thankful for those ornery little friends that just want to bring out the best in me.

As the holiday season comes to a close and it is back to the grind, take time to think about what you are thankful for. I discussed this a few weeks ago. Since then I have taken the time to think about this more. I have evaluated what I feel is important. I have looked at my life and realized that God has blessed me abundantly. Sure, there are always things that are going to happen that challenge us. There will always be things that don’t go our way. But, in those times, I challenge all of us to find a way to be thankful for those things as well. We can be thankful, not for the problems, but for the strength that is built in us through those problems. When we face tough times, if we continue to trust God and lean on him, we will gain strength. We can be sure that God’s love will see us through. That is something to be thankful for. I Thessalonians 5:16-18 says, “Be joyful always. Pray continually. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Our prayers and thankfulness should not change with our circumstances. By staying diligent in doing God’s will in these situations, we will be happier and more thankful. I challenge everyone to think outside the box a little bit. The obvious things to be thankful for come to our mind every day. Think about what we have to be thankful for that isn’t right there in front of us. Maybe it is just things that happen with our family like I discussed above. Maybe it is something as simple as your kids getting older and traveling better. That may sound like a little thing, but when you like to travel that is a huge thing. We all have different things to be thankful for. We all have different things in our life that we can appreciate. But we all have one thing in common that we should be thankful for on a daily basis, and that is our mighty and gracious God. Other things will come and go. But not Him. Not our God. He is always there. He will never leave us. One of these days Jesus is coming back. I have thought about that the last week or so as well with everything that has gone on. He is coming back at some point. We have all made excuses for why we have done things that go against God’s will. We have all made excuses for why we couldn’t be at church or why we couldn’t do that Bible study. But I heard a quote one time that said, “Excuses will always be there for you, but opportunities won’t.” We have an opportunity to have a relationship with God. God has given us such a great opportunity and I sure don’t want to waste it. So many times I have a wish list that I pray to God for, but I need to really remember to work hard at just taking the time to say, “Thank You God”!!!