Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. – Philippians 4:9

I try to keep my golf illustrations few and far between. A) Because a lot of people are simply not interested, and B) Because my golf stories tend to be more cautionary tales than celebrations of achievement!

This spring/summer I have been privileged to play a little more often than usual, and along the way something interesting emerged that is causing me to think. I call it the “range verses reality” phenomenon.

It came to me during a couple of recent rounds when I was striking the golf ball beautifully, making great contact more than 90% of the time:

• Driver: flush.
• Irons: sweet.
• Chips: smooth contact every time.
• Putting: rhythm like a pendulum.

Had I been on the practice range my game would have looked just about perfect.

But I wasn’t on the practice range, I was on a course with trees, with rough, with water, with artfully placed bunkers, with hills and doglegs (turns) and with slick putting surfaces designed to punish small errors by running the ball off the green, into the bunker, or just a long way from the hole!

Out there in the middle of actual playing conditions, my “perfect” game returned a scorecard featuring more than two columns of numbers!

Parallels:

I thought about this when I attended the men’s Bible study. We all look pretty darned good reading our Bibles (hitting them flush), praying together (making sweet contact) and sharing our “God moments” (swinging so pure). We were hitting the center of the club face every time.

But what about the next morning, trying to hack out of some divot after we messed up with someone we love? Or midweek, hitting into another hazard with compromised values written all over it? Or at work, watching what had felt like a pure strike roll into the water because of misjudging a situation once again?

There is a world of difference between faith with friends on the church premises, and actually doing real life as a disciple of Jesus.

Church is a must, of course, because the local faith community is our anchor and our instruction and the place where we are loved and encouraged. But we have to put this life of following Jesus into play the other six days of the week.

Nothing can substitute for real life. It is, as I told my Sunday morning class yesterday, not that we have our life and our spiritual life. No, we have life, period; the question is how much of it are we going to invite Jesus into?

Happy Monday friends, peace and rich blessings – DEREK