Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in Heaven. (Matthew 5:16, NASB)
People are watching you—friends, neighbors, family members, co-workers, and especially your golf buddies. They pay attention to your words, to your actions, to how you handle difficult situations. How do you interact with others? How do you treat your family? What happens when you hit a ball OB? Or miss a three-footer?
If you’re prone to forgetting that others are watching you, just think about how frequently you comment on others—servers at restaurants, nurses at the hospital, doctors, salesmen, or that foursome up ahead taking forever to play.
We can be the humble person, the encourager, the even-tempered friend, the good listener.I was paying attention to the professional golfers when I attended my first Western Open in the late 1960s. The Chicago tour event was held at a rotation of Olympia Fields, Midlothian, and Beverly Country clubs. I was enamored with the Tour players. I still have the 25-cent programs from those tournaments with autographs from Jack Nicklaus, Chi Chi Rodriguez, Miller Barber, Raymond Floyd and several others. What I am sure no one else had picked up was a cigarette butt from Julius Boros. Can you imagine! Julius Boros smoked that cigarette! After a while I must have realized it wasn’t worth anything or I got tired of carrying it around in my pocket. Nevertheless, I was impressed with PGA Tour players—the way they dressed, how they carried themselves, and especially how they hit the golf ball.
Now, while nobody is going to follow us and pick up our discarded trash, they are going to take mental notes of how we carry ourselves. They may know we believe in Christ, but are we really different? Do we reflect him? The jokes we tell, are they G, PG, PG-13 or R? How do you talk about your spouse? How about the umpire that just called your son out on strikes?
In order to bless God and be blessed by him, we must act and live different than the world. “But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does” (James 1:25).
We can make a difference to those around us. We can be the humble person, the encourager, the even-tempered friend, the good listener. We can be the person who is asked for advice because our friends trust us.
Jesus said those words in the Sermon on the Mount about 2,000 years ago: “Let your light shine before men…” Yet it was only recently that Links Players president Jeffrey Cranford texted me, “Shine on!” The call to let our works stand out goes on.
—
Bill Euler
September 25, 2017
Copyright 2017 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.