“We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” (Acts 2:11, NIV)
Isn’t it nice to play from the fairway? Recently I had one of those rounds where I found myself constantly playing from trouble and quite honestly it worked out OK. But that’s not the norm. Usually if we stray from the path of least resistance, we’re going to face a lot of, well, resistance. And in golf, that can mean a very ugly scorecard.
Sometimes in our ministry with Jesus, we can hurt our effectiveness by making one of two common mistakes, and these can lead us to frustration and even doubt.
The first mistake is that we grow bored of the ordinary. Perhaps you have been effective in a particular role in ministry for some time. Or God has given you a very particular group of men or women to share your life with. But then you start to thinking, I’ve been doing this for a long while now. I think it’s time to move on. There’s no good reason for the move, really, just a sort of wanderlust for something different.
The second mistake comes when we grow googly-eyed for the gifting of another. That is, we might think that the way another person is serving is preferable to our own—more interesting or more honored.
There are certainly times in our lives when God will move us from one place to another, either in territory or in task. But it is always more likely that he’s got you right where he wants you. Links Players president Jeffrey Cranford calls living out this understanding “staying in your lane,” and by doing that very thing, God has made Jeffrey significantly effective in ministry for more than two decades.
Links Players and Links Fellowships are built on the commonality of golfers. It’s our lane. If we were to start reaching out to football players and auto enthusiasts and quilters, the core of our message—the gospel of salvation in Christ—would not change, but we would not be as zeroed in with our speech and our actions, and thus we would not be as effective.
In the same way that we should never be ashamed of the gospel, we should not be apologetic about the lane God has us running in. We should simply try to run with greater efficiency and greater speed, as it were, right where we are.
—
Jeff Hopper
January 27, 2017
Copyright 2017 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
Other devotions in this series:
A Life Lived in Fellowship, Part 1
A Life Lived in Fellowship, Part 2
A Life Lived in Fellowship, Part 3
A Life Lived in Fellowship, Part 5
A Life Lived in Fellowship, Part 6
A Life Lived in Fellowship, Part 7