“And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’” (Matthew 22:37, ESV)
Three decades have passed since our team of my partner Tom Flory, my son Peter, Mark Rougeux, Stewart Rawley, Dave Hentschel and Milt McKenzie agreed that our core values be embedded in a logo based on the letters in LINKS.
I’m sure our team above are pleased, as I am, that the Links Players leaders of today have held fast to these five fundamentals. Now these core values are represented in the new five-tee logo.
I’m reminded of the 1962 US Open as I begin writing today. The venue, Oakmont CC, stood a few miles from Latrobe, Pennsylvania, the home of three-time Masters champion, Arnold Palmer.
There in Arnie’s Land, an unpopular 22-year-old nicknamed “Fat Jack” would dethrone the king and place himself in golf history. Nicklaus putted like Ben Crenshaw, one three-putt to Arnie’s 11 over the 90 holes, finally outdistancing him in the final holes of the 18-hole playoff.
His first wife, Winnie, no golf teacher, gave Arnie a putting lesson later.
She told him he’d been moving his head.
A no-no to the King.
Arnie had strayed from a fundamental.
He tightened his knee-knock putting posture and captured the British Open the following month.
Fundamentals were what the original LINKS acrostic was all about.
One, if not the most important, was built into “the Big L,” carved from the first and Greatest Commandment: “You shall love God with all your heart, mind and soul…” (Matthew 22:37).
This, we believed, was the overarching purpose of Links Players.
Who were, players. Not spectators.
It was our responsibility to share Jesus Christ through our great sport of golf.
But the Great Commission, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” (Matthew 28:19) must flow from the Great Commandment, not precede it.
To emphasize both the Great Commandment and Great Commission, we created a new logo with both the L and the S in LinkS capitalized.
Though we had more than five core values, we finally agreed on the following:
Love God and others (Matthew 22:37-39)
Integrate Christ’s reign into family and vocation (Matthew 6:33)
Network friends together in Christ (Acts 2:42)
Kindle compassion for the poor and needy (Matthew 25:40)
Share Christ through the great game of golf (2 Corinthians 5:20)
Which of these pillars was of greatest importance? We said, “The Big L, the greatest of all the commandments was first and foremost.”
To be lovers of God was to be our highest calling. To love God with all our beings and our neighbors as ourselves, our chief purpose.
This is the fundamental upon which Jesus said, “On these two depend all the whole law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:40, NASB).
As I ponder the L or first pillar today, I ask myself the same question Jesus asked Peter three times, “Do you love me?” (John 21:15-17).
Do I love Jesus? Really, do I love him?
He gave us the acid test of genuine love for God: “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me” (John 14:21, ESV).
—
Jim Hiskey
April 2, 2018
Copyright 2018 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
OTHER DEVOTIONS IN THIS SERIES:
Behind LINKS: The All-the-Time I
Behind LINKS: The Friendly N
Behind LINKS: The Compassionate K
Behind LINKS: The Ambassadorial S