LOSING IT

For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. (Romans 11:29, ESV)

I was very careful to warn my high school golfers as we began this season: golf is a game of peaks and plateaus.

Sure, we would all like to play our best all of the time. I had one young man, after a series of truly ugly holes, hit two good shots onto the green, leaving a reasonable birdie putt. "That's what I'm capable of," he told me enthusiastically. Perhaps, I thought, but not very often.

Even the best don't hit it their best very often. That's the way the game is played. Each shot establishes the requirements for the next. Hit it poorly and you'll be working a lot harder than if you hit it well.

But beyond those bad days are the bad seasons. After little or no play during the winter months, your springtime efforts suggest that this will be one tough year. Or, after a month of good practice, everything goes haywire. You begin to wonder if your game with ever return, or if you should ever return to the game.

Been there? It's a place called discouragement, and it's no fun.

The same place exists in our spiritual lives. We ask Christ to enter our lives, to occupy our hearts, and the days that follow are rich with joy. We lean on Him for every provision, and He responds. We attend to His Word, and it jumps to life in our souls. We stop looking so closely at ourselves, we begin giving to others, and we see the fruits of such labor in the lives of others and our own lives as well. Oh, it's so good to be a Christian!

Then comes the hour of discouragement. The enemy of our souls sets plans against us and moves them to action. Worse, God seems to be giving His approval. Where in those early days His presence was keenly before us, now He has apparently withdrawn. There is no sense that He is on our side, because there is little sense of Him at all. Or so our enemy would have us think.

In these days of discouragement, we feel inadequate, unequipped, maybe even uncalled for.

How grand it is, then, to be able to turn to the promises of Scripture to be reminded that the enemy fights with weapons of untruth. What is true is this:

God has gone nowhere.

And the call He has placed on your life, as well as the gifts with which He has equipped you to do His work—these too remain. They are irrevocable. God does not go back on His word or His plans. Once He has made us His, there is no "buyer's remorse" on His part. He gives us all we need to serve Him, and He calls on us to use those gifts, even in our seasons of disheartenment.

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Jeff Hopper

May 7, 2008

Copyright 2008 Links Players International

The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.