"When You're Hoping for a Miracle" in American Sign LanguageSample

There’s Always the Possibility of a Miracle
By Rick Warren

“When someone becomes a Christian, he becomes a brand new person inside. He is not the same anymore. A new life has begun!” (2 Corinthians 5:17 LB)

Have you noticed that baseball is a game of numbers? Everything is scrutinized, measured, and ranked. And, in baseball, everybody falls short of perfection. Nobody bats a thousand. If you bat in the 300s, they’ll pay you a million dollar salary, and if you do it for several years, they’ll put you in the Hall of Fame. In any other area of life, having a 70 percent failure rate would not be considered super stardom. Baseball has an impossible standard; nobody can reach a thousand. Nobody is perfect.

In baseball, you can’t hide your failures. When a guy comes up to bat, they announce his batting average on the radio. They don’t just say, “He’s hitting pretty badly.” They say, “He’s hitting 198!”

But the thing about baseball — and life — is that there’s always the possibility of a miracle in the last hit of the game because baseball is a game without a clock. You may think you’re in the last inning of your life, but it’s never too late for a miracle. It’s never too late to start believing. It’s never too late to start over. You can be forgiven. You can change. You can get a new life.

I don’t know how many losses you’ve had in life, but I will tell you this: Life is like baseball. We all have a few hits, a lot of errors, and definitely a lot of strikeouts — but there’s always the possibility of a miracle. As that great theologian Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.” It’s not too late!

When Mary Magdelene went to Jesus’ tomb and found it empty, she was filled with pain and grief over her loss. She felt like it was over and she had lost everything. Maybe you feel like that.

Thomas the disciple was filled with hopelessness because his fear of disappointment caused him to doubt. Have you felt that way about something in your life?

Another disciple, Peter, was filled with guilt and shame because he denied Jesus Christ, and it caused him to be hopeless. He thought he could never be forgiven.

But all three of these people were transformed by hope.

The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “When someone becomes a Christian, he becomes a brand new person inside. He is not the same anymore. A new life has begun!” (LB)

It’s never too late for a fresh start.

Talk It Over

What has the fear of disappointment kept you from doing in life?

Why do you think it’s so difficult for people to believe that they can be forgiven?

What is the evidence in your life that a new life began in you when you became a Christian?