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SEPTEMBER 9, 2011
DEEP IMPRESSIONS
...we see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death...
(Hebrews 2:9, NIV)
I was first introduced to the idea of visualizing golf shots when I read Jack Nicklaus’ Golf My Way as a teenager. Nicklaus suggested, according to his own practice, that before executing each shot a golfer should see it in his or her
mind’s eye. The notion, which has been further advanced by neurologists and sports psychologists, is that if we can first capture the shot as a picture in our mind, the body will follow and produce
the desired result.
Not much later, I was equally convinced of the validity of SyberVision’s idea that if I watched lulling videos of
Al Geiberger’s impeccable swing over and over in succession, the impressions made in the viewing would transfer to my own game. They did. While I never developed Geiberger’s swing, his rhythm
and fluidity helped greatly in finding tempo on the course myself.
Believe me, my testimony is only a small part of the evidence for the effectiveness of visualization in one’s
golf swing. But I am convinced that a spiritual significance rises up here as well. For all around us, we are surrounded by visual images begging to capture our attention.
In the viewing of movies, TV programs, and even commercials, those of us living today belong to the first generations
to have had access to so much artificial visual stimuli. And each of these stimuli possesses the ability to make an imprint in our mind. Remembering Paul’s observation to the Corinthians that all
things are permissible but “not everything is beneficial” (1 Corinthians 10:23), we find need to sort out the images that call us away from God and attend only to those images that give us a
picture of who He is and what He has done for us.
The writer of Hebrews recognized that in Jesus, God had made Himself visible to us. He had lived a viewable life,
ending in death, then returning resurrection. If ever there was an imprint the man or woman of God should have in mind, it is this one: the picture of Jesus giving all for us. Imagine what kind of living
that would provoke us toward!
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Jeff Hopper
September 9, 2011
Copyright © 2011 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
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