“Does [the Almighty] not see my ways and count my every step?” (Job 31:4, NIV)
From the next tee over, I watched my buddy drive up to a flat spot maybe 50 yards from the green. The pro who was with him tossed several balls from the cart and my friend jumped out. Time to go to work.
The shot is one of those the tour pros make look easy: 30 to 60 yards out with a lot of open flat green to the hole. Is it a lob? A one-hop-and-spin shot? A low runner?
Whatever it is, it is a shot made more difficult by the fact that virtually no practice facility offers a similar look. There the greens are too small, too perched, too bunkered. You have to get out on the course to replicate the shot. This is what my buddy had done, pro alongside, to get a lesson in a shot that was driving him crazy.
Building a well-rounded golf game is no easy task. The minute you get a handle on one aspect of your game, something else starts eluding you altogether.
A righteous life is equally difficult to attain. In fact, if we allow honesty to sit atop the other aspects of “right living” for long enough to do even a cursory assessment, we will all admit that we miss the mark over and over. Today, we may get one weak spot right, but we’re tripped up in another arena. That is precisely why we need Jesus, why we must cling to his righteousness instead of our own.
And yet we do not give up in the quest for maturity, because the Bible in so many places calls us to a righteous lifestyle. It’s not self-styled or self-reached righteousness. Rather, it is righteousness according to the outlines of God’s instruction—and those instructions capture quite a range of attitudes and actions.
When Job is quoted in chapter 31 of the book that bears his name, he gives us one of the finest outlines we can find of a righteous life. Look at what it includes: sexual purity (verses 1 and 9-12), honesty and integrity in business (vv. 5-8), justice toward those in subordinate positions (vv. 13-15), compassion and generosity toward troubled and needy people (vv. 16-23), neither greed nor lack of trust in God’s provision (vv. 24-28), humility even with enemies (vv. 29-30), hospitality (vv. 32), and open contrition before God and others (vv. 33-34).
In golf a good putter might talk up his precision, a long driver her distance. But the numbers on the scorecard usually reveal inadequacies—there’s so much more to master. Still, we would not stop calling an unpolished player a “golfer.”
As children in God’s kingdom, our position is secure. He does not stop calling us “his.” But God is polishing us, rounding us out in our righteousness. We cannot boast of excellence in purity only, say. We must allow him to do his broader work in us, the flourishing of all sorts of righteousness, that we might truly reflect the light of Christ.
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Jeff Hopper
May 14, 2013
Copyright 2013 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.