Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him… The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. (Jeremiah 17:7,9, NIV)
Jon Rahm has found a home on the PGA Tour. It didn’t take long.
The young Spaniard was winner of the Ben Hogan Award, honoring the best male amateur and collegiate player in the country, in both 2015 and 2016—an unprecedented repeat. A resume like that opens doors for sponsor exemptions and Rahm parlayed these into near misses and then a win at the Farmers Insurance Open in January and a close challenge to Dustin Johnson at the WGC-Mexico Championship. Just 12 months ago, Rahm was walking off a college campus. Now look!
We can shun our deceitful heart and exchange it for the heart of God in us.With all his success this season, Rahm came to The Players Championship as a likely contender, even with no experience at Sawgrass. Through two rounds he proved his adherents right. Then came Saturday. Here’s how Rahm described it: “I made a lot of good swings that I just keep getting bad breaks or not what I hoped for and it was just I kept getting pounded and pounded.” He shot 82.
Welcome to my game, Jon Rahm. It is here that blessing and curse live side by side, and I never know which my swing will produce next.
Intriguingly, this uncomfortable juxtaposition shows up in Scripture as well. Surely you are familiar with God’s indictment of humanity through the prophet Jeremiah—the one in which we are told that the heart cannot be trusted. Our heart is bent on deceiving us. Worse, it is unfixable. Read Jeremiah and you don’t need fire and brimstone. It is enough to know that, spiritually speaking, we all suffer from heart trouble. Compared to this, your AFib is peanuts.
But here’s the whole truth. Just a few lines ahead of this diagnosis we find a picture of blessing. It defines the person who trusts in God, placing all confidence in him. This person
“will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit” (Jeremiah 17:8).
Your spouse has likely already told you that you are a complicated human being. Jeremiah’s prophetic words prove it. But those words also give us hope and opportunity. We can shun our deceitful heart and exchange it for the heart of God in us. When we trust him to save us, lead us, and mature us, we sink our roots into a better soil, rich with spiritual nutrition and fruitful even in the driest of times.
—
Jeff Hopper
May 17, 2017
Copyright 2017 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.