Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. (1 Peter 1:22, NIV)
As a high school kid, I spent long summer evenings playing golf until the last vestige of light allowed us to see only from here to there. When this year’s first LPGA major championship, the ANA Inspiration, snuck in one more playoff hole under hastily ignited floodlights, I enjoyed watching, because I have been where these contestants were—trying to capture just one more hole.
It is in hours like these that we can fall into the wistful plea, “Oh, to be young again.”
There is, perhaps, something to be envied in young, strong men and women, such as we see in the LPGA’s Austin Ernst, a tour winner and Solheim Cup standout. Maybe it is what we have lost; maybe it is something we never possessed.
Such meditation, however, tends toward the physical aspects of who we are and what we can accomplish when we are well-framed and fit, when our energy seems to go on and on, and when our dreams pull us along. Yet we are so much more than this. As we progress experientially, we grow in our emotional and relational understandings. More than this, as those who have chosen to follow Jesus, we should be growing in our spiritual character and connections. And when we do, we would not think of going back to our younger days, where we appear so immature now in our own eyes.
Such spiritual growth, as we discussed with Ernst in this year’s Links Players magazine, comes in two arenas: personal practice and corporate commitments. We take time on our own to grow in the Lord, spending precious minutes and hours in reading and prayer. Jesus, we know, found renewal in his late nights and early mornings with the Father. We should seek this same time as frequently as possible.
Then we turn outward in fellowship and service. Men and women of God minister to each other when we give away the love we have learned from the Lord himself. The Spirit compels us through the Word and we begin to exercise the one anothers: be patient with one another, forgive one another, seek one another’s good, bear one another’s burdens, speak truth to one another—here are only a few of more than 40 such exhortations. As we grow, we get with it, serving the Lord by fellowshipping with others and ministering in his name. The love in us becomes love reaching out.
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Jeff Hopper
April 27, 2018
Copyright 2018 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
MORE DEVOTIONS IN THIS SERIES
Links Players Mag 1: Wesley and Windfalls
Links Players Mag 2: EJ in God’s Hands
Links Players Mag 3: Ted’s Forgiveness
Links Players Mag 5: Stanko’s Trials
Links Players Mag 6: Andrea’s Openness