Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. (Proverbs 4:23, ESV)
Everyone knows that talking to your ball mid-flight has nothing to do with the outcome. Yet, we all do it! Some of us shout at it. Some of us downright beg it! Some think that adding an expletive or two will make a difference. Alas!
Nothing causes me to grin more than watching someone beg their ball to do certain things. The commentary is often just downright hilarious: “Get down, get down, get down—no, I mean get up, get up, get up!!”
If I were more mischievous, I would take a recorder and record all the instructions for post-impact, mid-air shots. Of course, there would have to be some “outtakes.”
I have an old friend who happens to be a pastor, a great preacher, and, I might add, a superb athlete. He is a former D1 baseball player, and he loves the game of golf. However, he “Can’t carry a tune in a bucket.”
His sound booth team decided to play a trick on him. Unbeknownst to him, they recorded his singing during corporate worship for a year. His lavalier mic was on yet off to the speakers, but his voice was recorded.
At the end of the year, they produced a CD with “____’s Best Hits.” Although it was unspeakably painful to listen to, he laughed with the rest of us. I laughed so hard I had tears running down my cheeks.
If I had been “mic’d up” in my early years, and someone had recorded my post-impact instructions to a ball in flight, I would be trying to find those tapes for one reason—to burn them.
For forty-five years, I have “prided myself” for not “cuss’in” on the course. In my younger years, before knowing Christ Jesus, I had a foul mouth. Once Jesus changed my heart, saying ugly things on a golf course disappeared.
Recently, though, I mishit a shot and, under my breath, said something I shouldn’t have said. No one heard it, but I knew the Lord did. I paused for a few moments, told the Lord I was sorry, and asked him to forgive me.
I am not shocked that I still battle sinful things. I am well aware that “He is still working on me.” But this caught me by surprise. Seemingly, this unguarded moment came out of nowhere.
It is no news to me that my tongue is partially tamed. However, it occurred to me that the ultimate issue was not my tongue but my heart. Jesus teaches, “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45).
Deeper still, the Holy Spirit was kind enough to be more specific by showing me that the primary issue was, at least at that moment, “Golf had become too important to me.” That struggle is all too real.
This is why Solomon instructs us to “guard our hearts with all vigilance.” Taming our tongues is mostly accomplished by keeping our hearts guarded, tender, and pliable to the things of God.
Three hundred years ago, Robert Robinson penned the words to a powerful hymn, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. In it, one stanza goes like this:
O to grace how great a debtor, daily I’m constrained to be. Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.
Oh, Lord! Bind my wandering heart to thee….seal it for thy courts above.
Prayer: Forgive me when I wander.