You walk through the gate, eyes cast down onto the field, bag slung over your shoulder. You mentally walk through each of your fears, again and again. A nearby ball is cascading excitedly across the wet grass, throwing beads of water onto your bare shins. You make it to the bleachers, nervous as ever, and equip your shins and feet with cleats, socks and shin-guards... What's going to happen next? A grueling tryout. Everything you do will be watched; every mistake and every success. You just hope your mistakes aren't too many.

Think about another reality where there's something more at stake: your life. What do you do when you're walking onto the tryout field for God's team, for the spot in Eternal Life? The truth is that you couldn't even kick the ball right if you wanted to. But, guess what? Jesus has already taken the ball and put it in the goal FOR you. All you have to do is accept His gift, which He's freely giving you—no strings attached!!

Let's face it. In every facet of sports, you want your coach to want you so badly that he can't help but put you on the team and give you playing time, right? We want the coach to need us because we're that good—that much better than everyone else.

Yeah, we know that this sometimes doesn't work out. We get cut, we don't play the amount of time that we want to play, we make a bad play when the coach is watching, or we don't get enough credit. The list goes on and on. But there's something that you may have overlooked. God is looking at you as your Head Coach and as a hopeful Father. He WANTS you with all of His heart, so much that He died for you so that you could be on His team and in His Kingdom forever with Him. All you have to do is make that choice. And after it's all said and done, your life will never be the same.