Don’t Swing At A Bad Pitch

“Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, has borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; so she said to Abram, ‘The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” - Genesis 16:1-2
 
 
If you are a sports fan, you might recall Michael Jordan’s short-lived stint in baseball. Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time, decided in 1993 that he wanted to try his hand as a baseball player. Playing baseball was a dream of his, but his time in the league was short-lived because to put it bluntly, Michael could not hit the ball.  
 
Jordan’s batting average hovered around .200 which meant that he only hit the ball one out of every five tries. This was a far cry from the kind of success he experienced on the basketball court. According to analysts, Michael’s weakness, when it came to hitting, was his tendency to swing at bad pitches.  
 
For the uninitiated, there is a range from the knees to the chest and over the plate that makes a pitch ideal for hitting. A bad pitch is a pitch that is out of this range; it’s a ball that a batter is unable to hit and can ultimately cause him to strike out. Michael’s downfall in baseball was his tendency to swing at pitches that were not good for him.
 
Swinging outside the strike zone is not something that only Michael Jordan struggled with. We see in Genesis 16 that Abram has the same struggle. As Abram and Sarai wait for the Lord to answer their prayers for a child, they instead decide to come up with their own plan. Sarai suggests that Abram sleep with her slave, Hagar.  
 
Sarai and Abram are not patient in waiting for the right pitch (God’s pitch). Instead, they swing at a bad pitch (operate in their own strength and timing) in hopes of getting the same result. Have you ever found yourself swinging at a bad pitch? Have you ever prayed and asked God to give you something; moving in your own time when you didn’t get an answer from God or you didn’t get the response you wanted?  
 
No matter what the situation, let me encourage you to have patience. The right pitch will come, but you must be wailing to wait for it. God doesn’t want you to swing at a bad pitch!