Jim Barker played the PGA Tour and PGA Tour Champions, including busy seasons in 1972, 1977, and 1998. He is currently an instructor at The Quarry Golf Club in San Antonio and has been named South Texas Teacher of the Year and Harvey Penick Teacher of the Year.
Jim, you have talked publicly about when you crossed a line you thought you never cross. Tell me about that.
It was in 1976, in the Texas State Open at Horseshoe Bay. I was in trouble in my life, but I don’t think I was willing to acknowledge it, and especially confess it until I crossed a line in life I thought I could never cross. That line was cheating on the golf course. I had cheated on lots of other things. Lots. But to cheat on the golf course, I knew that I could never do. That would be the one line I thought I could never cross. Until I did it.
I walked up and looked at my second shot that I’d tried to knock on a green on a par-5. I walked to my ball and found it one foot out of bounds. Without even thinking, I kicked the ball back in bounds. And when I did that, I got scared, because for the first time in my life I came to face the sobering reality that not only had I just done something wrong, there was something horribly wrong in me that made me do wrong. I knew now that there was no line I couldn’t cross. And it scared me.
So I faced my own inner wrongness in my life—as the Bible would call it, the sin in my life, which was the source of my sins. I knew I couldn’t fix me, because I was what was wrong with me.
It was a few months later on the PGA Tour in 1977 in Memphis that finally, out running by a lake one day, I was compelled to my knees to give my life to Christ, asking him, begging him, to come into my life, to do whatever he wanted to do with me, and he did. That was the beginning of a brand-new life for me, my sins forgiven, receiving his eternal life and beginning to heal the inner wrongness in me.
Was there an in-between there? Did you seek somebody out and say, “Man, here’s what I did, and how do I get right with God?”
No, I never did that. What did happen though was my first wife, who always thought she was a believer because she believed the historical facts about God and Christ and all of that, was a little bit concerned that I didn’t believe any of it. So a fellow that she worked for gave her a book to give to me, which was Born Again, by Charles Colson. I read this book and I saw this man’s life change from a ruthless political hatchet man to someone who willingly went to prison, and his life changed. So that awakened me to the possibility that maybe there was hope for me in this person called Jesus, whoever he is.
So did you talk to somebody on Tour, did you talk to a pastor, or was this just, “Nope, it’s all me and God”?
No, that was all God. As Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father unless the Father draws him.” The Father drew me to his Son that day. Right after that decision, I knew that Christ had changed my life because I had these desires inside and I didn’t know where they came from. It was like the blackboard of my life had been erased. I had a brand-new start. I had something on the inside of me that was not there before, a sense of joy—not just happiness based on what I shot that day or what I was doing, but true joy. I had an acute awareness that this was true because there was a new someone living in me, giving me his desires, his motivations. I had a great desire to pick up a Bible and read about this man I’d just invited into my life.
The next thing, to my amazement, was that I wanted to go seek out another Christian on the Tour. Now understand, I didn’t like the people at all, I didn’t like Christians. The first one I went to was Rik Massengale. I said, “Rik, do you still have these Bible studies out here?” He said, “Why do you want to know?” I said, “Well, this is what’s happened to me.” And he said, “Yeah, we do!” So Rik was one. Wally Armstrong was another guy. Two weeks after this experience I’d had, he walked up to me on the putting green in Philadelphia and said, “Jim, someone told me that you’ve become a believer in Christ and Christ has come into your life.” I said, “Yep.” He said, “Well, I guess there’s hope for all of us then!”
You’ve told this story of the line you could not cross many times. How have people responded?
I’ll tell you what’s interesting about telling that story is that the people who respond to that story are the people who have never faced their own shortcomings. I’ve told that story to wealthy businessmen, owners of companies, and it’s a story that relates because we all know in life that we’ve violated our own conscience. We all know that we’ve done wrong when we shouldn’t do wrong. So an honest story helps someone see that I was willing to face not just that I had done wrong, but that there was something wrong in me. Something about that relates to our common humanity and our common need for God to come into our life.
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