“…like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” (Matthew 7:24, NIV)
I stood on the seventeenth tee unsure what to do. Though I had been hitting the driver well most of the day, the wind was in our face on this narrow little par-4, and I just couldn’t seem to settle on a shape in my pre-shot mind.
So I just pulled the trigger and… hit the best tee shot of the round. Go figure.
Normally it works the other way around. I frequently stand over a shot with full confidence and comfort then send my ball to a nasty doom.
So I am caught in a middle where neither concern nor confidence guarantees a certain outcome. My result is not necessarily a function of my expectations. In fact—with apologies to my sport psychologist friends—it can be the dead opposite!
It’s not unusual for people to live their very lives with a similar misconception, however—that all will work out just as they see it in their minds. Rarely is that true. And while most people recognize this disturbing reality, few apply it to their eternal considerations. They walk on thinking, I must be going to heaven, with no other basis for that forecast than their own mustered confidence.
And when they don’t feel it? They call on their best positive-thinking mantras—because, their friends in the world tell them, “If you believe it, you can achieve it.”
In his little sermon/e-book, The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness, pastor Tim Keller writes: “If someone has a problem with low self-esteem we, in our modern world, seem to have only one way of dealing with it. That is remedying it with high self-esteem.”
God points us in an altogether different direction. He points us to his Son. Jesus is the solution.
When we are unsure of the present, we can try to conjure up every form of self-confidence—or we can place our trust in the Lord who delivers on his every promise. When we are unsure of our eternity, we can offer up a contemporary platitude along the lines of “all religions lead to the same God”—or we can go to the Rock that is higher, the one Saving King, Jesus.
My confidence, my designs, my esteem—all these bear the same fault: they are mine. When instead I count on Christ alone, I can stand as firm as the ground beneath my feet.
—
Jeff Hopper
July 3, 2012
Copyright 2012 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.