Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; But we trust in the name of the Lord our God (Psalm 20:7, ESV).
Bobby Jones once observed, “Golf is the closest game to the game we call life. You get bad breaks from good shots; you get good breaks from bad shots, but you have to play the ball where it lies.”
Drawing comparisons between golf and life is nothing new. First Tee, for instance, teaches life skills to youngsters by employing golf analogies. Their website recognizes, “Golf is a perfect practice ground for learning skills that go far beyond the fairways.”
If pressed, I have no idea what the criteria for ranking the top ten parallels between golf and life are, but the issue of trust, in my not-so-humble opinion, should be considered somewhere on that list.
Think about it! You stand over the ball, and there is nothing between you and the pin but 195 yards of water. The green is receptive, but it is also an island. There is little to no margin for error. Call it what you must, but at the heart of the matter is a heart of trust or mistrust.
Jeffrey Cranford, our Links President, tells the story of qualifying to play in the PGA Championship at Medinah in 2006. He was forty-two. When he stepped out of the tent for his opening tee shot on #10, he saw a fairway lined with fans twenty deep from tee to green.
In that moment, Jeffrey had to trust all the work he had invested in getting to Medinah would be vindicated in that opening swing. As it turned out, he “striped it,” hit the green in two, and two-putted for an opening birdie.
When we turn to Scripture, the verb “to believe” looms large. In modern parlance, we often use the word “believe” to mean something like: “the mental assent to certain propositions or the intellectual affirmation to certain historical documents like the Nicene Creed.” Which, of course, is entirely appropriate.
But when, for example, the Apostle John wrote his gospel, he used the verb “believe” in the deeper sense of “trust;” that is, while John intellectually affirmed the truth of Jesus’ words, he was driving at something much deeper—he is calling us to personally trust the One who spoke the words in the first place.
It’s one thing to mentally acknowledge the truth of a proposition or the historical accuracy of the Man from Galilee. It’s another thing to entrust your life to this One who said he was sent from heaven by the Father to “redeem the lost.”
When the first Adam refused to believe God’s word, he demonstrated his lack of trust in the God who spoke the word. When the Last Adam—Jesus—trusted the Father all the way to death on the cross, God honored his faith by raising him from the dead.
When we believe God’s word (i.e., the Bible), we demonstrate our trust not only in God’s wisdom but also in his heart. Taking God at his word in all the situations of life honors him. Like Jesus and because of Jesus, we, who by grace, trust God’s word, will also be raised from the dead unto everlasting life.
Everyone places their faith in something. Even the atheist, at bottom, has to acknowledge some beliefs are foundational. That is, some beliefs are axiomatic, requiring no further justifications. We either begin with trust in God’s word, or we begin with our speculations about life and its meaning.
To borrow from Robert Frost, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by.” Like Frost, we are standing at a fork in the road. We should choose wisely!
Prayer: Father, by your Spirit, awaken our hearts to trust you.