Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; love and faithfulness go before you. (Psalm 89:14, NIV)
When it comes to golf, do you like your every accessory? How hard did you search for headcovers to match your bag? Did you order your belt online to find the perfect color?
And what about your equipment? While some suggest it’s only a marketers’ ploy, others swear that the ball they play was made especially for their driver, and that the careful pairing shows up in a measure of distance—a favorite result for every golfer!
Whether we’re weekend enthusiasts or true players, we can go for as much (or as little) matching as we desire.
But here is one place you don’t want to skimp. You should follow your swing models as closely as possible. If you’re working toward the flowing rhythm of Fred Couples or the stellar lines of Justin Rose, if you want the mental focus of Stacy Lewis or the pure putting stroke of Inbee Park, here’s what you need to do: keep watching them. Consume visual images of these greats at work, and let those images “nourish” your own output on the course.
The same is true in our walk of faith. If we are to reflect Christ, we must first see Christ. If we are the image of God, then we must know what that image looks like.
In Psalm 89, Ethan the Ezrahite declared four attributes of God in the fourteenth verse alone: righteousness, justice, love, and faithfulness.
In the kingly picture of Ethan’s lyric, righteousness and justice are the foundation of God’s throne. Imagine you lived in a kingdom where you knew precisely what the highest values of the king were. Now if you wanted the praise of that king, or even just an audience with him, what values would you practice and hope to project? You would do your best to match the highest values of the king.
Now stop imagining. For God’s kingdom is real, and as a child of God you live in it. If God’s great values include righteousness and justice, what should your values be? Why, the very same, of course! You should live a life where you demonstrate righteousness and dispense justice. And since we know this too, you should enter every interaction with the same traits that go before God: love and faithfulness.
As the children of the King, our lives are meant to be a God-match. We were built to show his characteristics as our own. Yes, sin has marred us. But so also has the salvation of Christ—who is our very righteousness—restored us. In him we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), and thanks to Ethan the Ezrahite, we have remarkable picture of just how that being should be!
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Jeff Hopper
June 18, 2014
Copyright 2014 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.