And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised. (Hebrews 11:32-33, NIV)
How about an easy quiz to start today? Tell me if you recognize these names: Tiger, Phil, Annika, DJ.
I know, pretty simple. How about if we back it up into history? Hagen, Hogan Wright, Palmer.
You’re probably still coming in at 100%. Well done! So let’s try these: Brainerd, Liddell, Carmichael, Elliot.
OK, this last group is not a list of golfers. Don’t be ashamed if you’re stumped—unless you think it’s important to know some of the great men and women of the faith.
If you’ve been hanging around this devotional or a local Links Fellowship for some time now, you recognize the missionary nature of what we’re doing. By that, we mean that we carry the gospel of Christ into the context of a particular people group. In this way, missionaries may be foreign or domestic, with national boundaries of lesser importance than cultural ones. To talk to golfers with greatest effect, it truly helps to know how they talk, what they wear, and why they make the time to play the game.
The last list of four names are the names of four important missionaries of the three centuries before this one.
David Brainerd spent four fruitful years of his short life preaching and pastoring among three Native American groups in the mid-1700s. His churches grew by way of conversion, and Brainerd wrote in his diary, “[I] could have no freedom in the thought of any other circumstances or business in life.” Brainerd died of tuberculous when he was just 29, but his influence for Christ extended beyond those he worked with to those who would choose to follow a similar course.
It is easy in a culture like ours, where so many are held up for specifically valued talents, to have the wrong heroes.One of these was the storied Olympian Eric Liddell. Likely you know him from the film, Chariots of Fire. Liddell spent the last 20 years of his life as a missionary in China, where he eventually died of a brain tumor in an internment camp during World War II. During his time in the camp, he became known as a caretaker and guardian of integrity—a Christian gold medalist, we might say.
Between Brainerd and Liddell, Amy Carmichael arrived in India from her native England in 1895, beginning a 30-year mission among orphans in Dohnavur. During the last 20 years of her life, Carmichael was hindered by the effects of a bad fall, but she remained in India, writing songs and poems of faith that have endeared her to many through the years.
Five years after Carmichael’s death, Jim Elliot and four partners in ministry were speared to death by a people they had seemed to reach positively in Amazonian Ecuador. The story of these five missionaries, told first in Life magazine then in the work of Elliot’s wife Elisabeth, including Through Gates of Splendor, reveals how each understood the measure of his sacrifice as conveyed in Elliot’s famous reflection: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
Today’s message is simple: It is easy in a culture like ours, where so many are held up for specifically valued talents, to have the wrong heroes. In Christ’s kingdom, it is still the last who shall be first. Maybe we shouldn’t always be looking for the one who breaks the tape.
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Jeff Hopper
January 12, 2021
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The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.