And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2, NASB)
I had been playing golf for about five years when I realized my game was not progressing. None of the guys I was playing with at the time were taking lessons, so we were all pretty much self-taught at the game. I figured my game would get better by simply playing and practicing, but I hadn’t really lowered my scores significantly enough to enjoy the game as much as I wanted to. But like much in life, frustration can lead us to solutions. I decided to take some lessons.
When the golf pro asked me to take a few swings and then stopped me after two and said, “Let’s start from the beginning,” I knew I was in trouble. We started discussing the grip, the setup, etc. At the end of that first lesson, I was beginning to think I had wasted my money. I just didn’t see how spending so much time discussing elementary issues was going to quickly affect my game. I was pretty athletic at the time and figured some of my natural athletic ability should kick in and take over. But I had paid for a series of lessons, so I went back and continued to take the lessons. When I finished the series, I realized I had previously known little to nothing about how to swing a golf club when I first started. Rather than get better right away, which I hoped would happen, I got worse. Then the season ended. Ugh! My game did not improve.
The following year I started playing again but did not start up the lessons. My thinking was that I would incorporate what I had already learned and would be fine. Of course, over time, I forgot most of it and my game did not improve. After several seasons passed with no improvement, I decided to take lessons again, this time with a different pro. He asked me to take a few swings and—you guessed it—he said, “Let’s start over.”
What I remember most about this second set of lessons is this: I realized at some point in the lessons that I was either going to do things his way, or I was going to quit taking lessons and just play the game my way. It is, by any measure, an issue of faith: I either believed and trusted that the pro knew what he was talking about or not. If I trusted him, then I was going to have to “unlearn” my way of doing things and learn to swing the club his way. That takes time and effort.
Living for God is exactly like that. I have my own ideas about how to live life—what works, what doesn’t work, what it means to be a “good person,” how to manage money, how to spend my time, what I want to give my life to, etc. But following Christ means taking up this daily challenge: Am I going to live today according to my own personal value system, or am I, by faith, going to believe that God knows what he is doing and place my life in his hands and trust his system for living?
Our verse today makes clear what is to happen to a follower of Christ: We are to be “transformed by the renewing of our minds.” Like a slow oil change (in with the good, out with the bad) or a slow swing change, it takes time and repeatedly exposing ourselves to God’s truth. What is the benefit to us in the here and now? We get to discover for ourselves and prove to the world that God’s ways are “good and acceptable and perfect.” It is his gift to us.
Just as in golf, where our game gets better when we surrender to an experienced pro, so our lives improve when we surrender our ways to Christ. We will learn that his ways are “good, acceptable, and perfect.”
—
Bob Kuecker
March 28, 2018
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The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.