Today a good friend of mine and I were discussing the act of preaching, or for some of us who aren’t ordained, teaching the Word. We were talking about the quality of messages delivered and he passed on a piece of advice his pastor had given him:

You can’t always go for the home run.

This drove our discussion for awhile and my good friend said something along the lines of, “what if someone’s spiritual journey culminated with their visiting your church the day you were delivering the message?”

To me, that’s enough motivation to deliver the very best I’ve got. If I have to deliver a message in front of a congregation on any given Sunday, you can bet your booty I’m going to swing for the fences.

But it doesn’t stop there. It also doesn’t matter what you do.

Factory worker. Baker. Policewoman. Teacher. Whatever. The old phrase goes (and it’s still very, very true:)

Anything worth doing is worth doing well.

For those of us who follow Jesus, we’re going to have to give an account one day to the Father. We’re going to have to account for everything we’ve done in life. We’re going to have to tell him why we did and didn’t what we did and didn’t.

When I played youth baseball, pitchers knew they were only going to have to throw me three pitches because I swung at the first three every time.

I struck out. A lot.

But guess who hit a lot of home runs, too?

My friend, live your life swinging for the fences.