I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts. (Psalm 119:100, NIV)
Without question, there is a significant youth movement afoot in the professional golf world. Big cheers are going to players not past 25 years old—to Jordan Spieth and Michelle Wie, to Seung-Yul Noh and, of course, Rory McIlroy. Younger still are LPGA phenoms Lexi Thompson and Lydia Ko, still teenagers and already multiple winners on tour, including Thompson’s major this season at the Kraft Nabisco Championship.
What is being said of all these players—and several others like them—is that they are fearless, undaunted by the experience and success of golfers even a half generation ahead. Adam Scott and Bubba Watson, Stacy Lewis and Justin Rose may be major champions and still young enough, but they are beatable.
Where does such confidence come from?
It comes from technique and athleticism and hard work. It comes from good coaching and committed training. And it comes from winning, where confidence is confirmed and heightened.
Youths can win, and so they do.
It is important to keep the same thing in mind in a spiritual sense. Whether you are young yourself or one who is older mentoring another still young, you must recognize that the Scriptures affirm the young while honoring the old.
In Psalm 119, we read the claim of a psalmist, one who in youth has outdistanced his elders by living for God. In 1 Timothy, Paul told his protégé that even in his youth Timothy could set an example for the believers in his pastoral care—an example in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity.
Are you young? Take the challenge to cultivate your faith. Resist temptation where it comes your way. What God is asking you to do is not too hard (Deuteronomy 30:11). Better still, what he is leading you to is a life of abundance, rich with eternal worth. Any “sacrifice” you must make in terms of passing up what the enemy offers in favor of what God directs is really a purchase of the best life we can live. Go for it. Not just for the day, but for your lifetime. You will never regret firmly following Jesus.
And if you are older, do not dismiss the young. Do not discourage their faith with your staid traditions or haughty wisdom. Instead, like Paul, encourage them to do what is truly beautiful and lasting in excellence. Challenge them to live for Jesus—and make your own commitment to show them how.
Pornography and celebrity and entertainment and complacency—these are vying for the generation upcoming. If younger men and women are instead to be a generation truly “up and coming” in matters of the faith, the young must stand their spiritual ground and the older must cover their backs as they do so.
In any age, age is not the issue. Timeliness is. We must be ever urgent for the gospel, for our own sakes, for the sake of others in the household of faith, and for the sake of the lost.
—
Jeff Hopper
June 30, 2014
Copyright 2014 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.