{"id":521,"date":"2016-08-15T22:57:18","date_gmt":"2016-08-16T03:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/concentration\/"},"modified":"2016-08-15T22:57:18","modified_gmt":"2016-08-16T03:57:18","slug":"concentration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/concentration\/","title":{"rendered":"Concentration"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:6.0pt;line-height:normal'><b>The One Who Dropped His Pants<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:3.0pt;text-indent:18.0pt;line-height: normal'>Steve Lyons will be remembered as the player who dropped his pants.<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:3.0pt;text-indent:18.0pt;line-height: normal'>He could be remembered as an outstanding infielder &#8230; as the player who played every position for the Chicago White Sox &#8230; as the guy who always dove into first base &#8230; as a favorite of the fans who high fived the guy who caught the foul ball in the bleachers. He could be remembered as an above-average player who made it with an average ability.<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:3.0pt;text-indent:18.0pt;line-height: normal'>But he won\u2019t. He\u2019ll be remembered as the player who dropped his pants on July 16, 1990.<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:3.0pt;text-indent:18.0pt;line-height: normal'>The White Sox were playing the Tigers in Detroit. Lyons bunted and raced down the first-base line. He knew it was going to be tight, so he dove at the bag. Safe! The Tiger\u2019s pitcher disagreed. He and the umpire got into a shouting match, and Lyons stepped in to voice his opinion.<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:3.0pt;text-indent:18.0pt;line-height: normal'>Absorbed in the game and the debate, Lyons felt dirt trickling down the inside of his pants. Without missing a beat he dropped his britches, wiped away the dirt, and &#8230; uh oh &#8230;twenty thousand jaws hit the bleachers\u2019 floor.<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:3.0pt;text-indent:18.0pt;line-height: normal'>And, as you can imagine, the jokes began. Women behind the White Sox dugout waved dollar bills when he came onto the field. \u201cNo one,\u201d wrote one columnist, \u201chad ever dropped his drawers on the field. Not Wally Moon. Not Blue Moon Odom. Not even Heinie Manush.\u201d Within twenty-four hours of the \u201cexposure,\u201d he received more exposure than he\u2019d gotten his entire career; seven live television and approximately twenty radio interviews.<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:3.0pt;text-indent:18.0pt;line-height: normal'>\u201cWe\u2019ve got this pitcher, Melido Perex, who earlier this month pitched a no-hitter,\u201d Lyons stated, \u201cand I\u2019ll guarantee you he didn\u2019t do two live television shots afterwards. I pull my pants down, and I do seven. Something\u2019s pretty skewed toward the zany in this game.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:3.0pt;text-indent:18.0pt;line-height: normal'>Fortunately, for Steve, he was wearing sliding pants under his baseball pants. Otherwise the game would be rated \u201cR\u201d instead of \u201cPG-13.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:3.0pt;text-indent:18.0pt;line-height: normal'>Now, I don\u2019t know Steve Lyons. I\u2019m not a White Sox fan. Nor am I normally appreciative of men who drop their pants in public. But I think Steve Lyons deserves a salute.<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:3.0pt;text-indent:18.0pt;line-height: normal'>I think anybody who dives into first base deserves a salute. How many guys do you see roaring down the baseline of life more concerned about getting a job done than they are about saving their necks? How often do you see people diving headfirst into anything?<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:3.0pt;text-indent:18.0pt;line-height: normal'>Too seldom, right? But when we do &#8230; when we see a gutsy human throwing caution to the wind and taking a few risks &#8230; ah, now that\u2019s a person worthy of a pat on the &#8230; back.<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:3.0pt;text-indent:18.0pt;line-height: normal'>So here\u2019s to all the Steve Lyons in the world.<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:right; line-height:normal'>In the Eye of the Storm by Max Lucado, Word Publishing, 1991, pp. 247-248<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:6.0pt;line-height:normal'><b>Wholly Consecrated to Him<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:3.0pt;text-indent:18.0pt;line-height: normal'>It was in 1873, in Dublin that D.L. Moody heard British evangelist Henry Varley utter those life changing words: \u201cThe world has yet to see what God can do with and for and through and in a man who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him.\u201d It was after an all-night prayer meeting in Dublin, at the home of Henry Bewley. Varley did not even remember making the statement when Moody reminded him of it a year later. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:3.0pt;text-indent:18.0pt;line-height: normal'>\u201cAs I crossed the wide Atlantic,\u201d Moody said, \u201cthe boards of the deck&#8230;were engraved with them, and when I reached Chicago, the very paving stones seemed marked with them.\u201d The result: Moody decided he was involved in too many ministries to be effective and therefore began to concentrate on evangelism. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:right; line-height:normal'>The Wycliffe Handbook of Preaching &amp; Preachers, W. Wiersbe, p. 200<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:6.0pt;line-height:normal'><b>Specific Objective<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:3.0pt;text-indent:18.0pt;line-height: normal'>Dr. Ari Kiev of Cornell University observed that from the moment people decided to concentrate all their energies on a specific objective, they began to surmount the most difficult odds. He concluded, \u201cThe establishment of a goal is the key to successful living.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:right; line-height:normal'>Today in the Word, July, 1990, p. 14<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The One Who Dropped His Pants Steve Lyons will be remembered as the player who dropped his pants. He could be remembered as an outstanding infielder &#8230; as the player who played every position for the Chicago White Sox &#8230; as the guy who always dove into first base &#8230; as a favorite of the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/concentration\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Concentration&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}