The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere. (1 Thessalonians 1:8, NIV)
Were you watching? Have you heard?
On Sunday morning, just minutes before I needed to climb in the car and head to our church’s worship service, everything converged. The US moved to the brink of retaining the Solheim Cup and only one scenario could prevent it: a clean sweep of the three matches still on the course. One of these matches was already in the bag for the Europeans, with Anna Nordqvist 5-up on Morgan Pressel. But Bronte Law was square with Ally McDonald and Suzann Pettersen came to the eighteenth 1-down to Marina Alex. Could the US hold fast?
In a word, no. Law seized a win at the sixteenth and the advantage at the par-3 seventeenth. Then it happened. Alex missed a clinching birdie putt from about 15 feet. McDonald missed a four-footer to extend her match at seventeen, so the win went to Law. And only seconds after, Pettersen rolled in a six-foot birdie putt and the thunder of European celebration clapped above the rolling green of the Gleneagles Centenary Course.
Paul commended the Thessalonian believers for the strength of their faith, powered by the Holy Spirit.Sports give us moments like these. We saw one just this spring, when Kawhi Leonard’s four-bounce prayer from the corner fell in to defeat the Sixers in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals and move the Raptors into a Finals matchup they would win to bring Toronto its first NBA championship. Like Pettersen’s putt, Leonard’s happened at home. One Canadian fan wrote, “The cheering from Toronto could be heard all the way to Vancouver.” Folks, that about 2,500 miles.
When a hometown player pulls off the winning shot in the waning moments, the cries ring out. All the way back to Bobby Thomson’s winning blast to give the New York Giants a trip to the World Series over the rival Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951, we’ve been hearing sports reports of “shots heard ’round the world.”
Beautifully, when I sat down and opened the Scriptures with brothers and sisters at church on Sunday morning, the passage we turned to was 1 Thessalonians 1, wherein Paul commended the Thessalonian believers for the strength of their faith, powered by the Holy Spirit. And let me add that their faith was not only strong, it was public. It was too genuine and too impactful not to be. Indeed, it had become the talk of the town—and beyond. Through them, God’s message rang out.
If you’re thinking your faith is meant to be a private matter, I daresay you’re doing it wrong. That’s not to say I haven’t made the mistake of keeping my own mouth shut at times when I should have spoken of Jesus. I confess I have. Rather, it is to say that I am reminded by the Thessalonians of old and some very fine brothers and sisters in my own present friendship that authentic, generous faith is like a winning putt in the Solheim Cup. Not everyone will love it, but everyone will hear about it.
Let’s let our lives and faith be such that we “rejoice with those who rejoice” (Romans 12:15) and that we “win the respect of outsiders” (1 Thessalonians 4:12).
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Jeff Hopper
September 17, 2019
Copyright 2019 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
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