I will walk in my house with blameless heart. I will set before my eyes no vile thing. (Psalm 101:2-3, NIV)
What would you pay to gain some of golf’s intangibles—timing, feel, confidence—the certain traits of an outstanding player?
You can’t really buy these, of course. Though through attention and discipline, you might build them into your game. For instance, spend an hour on the putting green, uninterrupted, stroking nothing but two- to six-footers and see what that does for your confidence next time you’re out on the course.
Now let’s talk about confidence in life. What causes it to come and go?
There is nothing that kills confidence like sin, especially sin done in secret. If I practice immorality, ignoring God’s outline in Scripture for a life that pleases him and honors his holiness, and yet I want others to think of me as a “family man” or a “godly leader” or just someone who’s “living right” so that his golf ball bounces the right way (yes, I am aware that is a foolish myth!), then I will find it very hard to walk with confidence. I will be worried that my sins and my friends will find me out. I’ll be constantly “covering my tracks,” “looking over my shoulder,” and otherwise hoping against hope that I won’t misstep. That’s a timid way to live.
One way to live consistently (and confidently) is to establish this age-old discipline: live in your home the same way you should live in public, and vice versa.
We live in a very private age. It is possible to shut our household doors to the world and yet live more worldly than if we were away from home. The media will bring to us what we used to have to go to the most sordid neighborhoods to obtain. Indeed we may make such choices thinking we can guard our secrets, that they’ll never get out. We think we might even hide them from God.
In his poetry, David didn’t dare go there. In Psalm 101, he wrote of living righteously at home, of spurning wicked options. Of course, in his life, David did make such an indiscretionary choice, sleeping with another man’s wife, a sin he thought he could keep secret. Not so.
It is a sad story, that of David’s reign and life. After his “secret sin”—one now told for the ages—the glorious king never really recovered. As his grasp on purity in his home slipped, his grip on power in his kingdom weakened. He never walked with the same confidence.
All sin is the same. It exposes our incapacity to save ourselves. It reveals our need for the Savior. But secret sin, often born at home, carries the auxiliary consequence of robbing that confident step that comes when we are truly right with God, when we are living obediently down the line of his instruction and command.
—
Jeff Hopper
April 9, 2013
Copyright 2013 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.