A Decision that Will More than Make Your Day.

March 13, 2024

Okay, before we get started today, let’s get this out of the way. I’ve always had terrible golfing form and I guess that’s why I never seemed to get better. Even with a few lessons, to prepare for this golf trip, my swing was something nobody sought to copy. For some reason, I always ended up on my back foot (not something helpful to the flight of the ball). So, I’ll take any advice offered, but believe me, I’ve heard it all. And I’m not likely to get better.

Now, let’s talk about this course. I had the one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play at the Coeur d’Alene Golf & Spa Resort in Idaho back around 2012. The golf package is one of the resort’s featured amenities. The course is immaculately maintained and beautiful, as you can see in the picture.

As one of my golfing buddies told me, the fairways are designed to be resort-friendly. That means they are not too narrow and many of them gently slope from the outer edges to the middle to help the balls stay in the fairway, thus encouraging the golfers to return. That may have been true, but it’s still a golf course and you’ve still got to get the ball from the tee box to the green and in the hole. Resort-friendly fairways only help so much. If memory serves me, I believe I shot a 99 that day—not my best, but respectable for me.

A Decision that Will More than Make Your Day. #hope #joy #writingcommunity Share on X

The resort provided a deluxe golf cart, as many practice balls as you wanted prior to your round, a massage under a tent prior to teeing off on the first hole and a forecaddie for each cart. He looked like he had just stepped off Augusta National (where they hold the Masters) in his white coveralls. He was great at helping advise us with distances, bunker locations, and reading the greens. And as I said, still the golfer has to get the ball where it needs to go.

The highlight for me was the world-famous floating green. The resort moved the green to a different location each day, so if you played multiple days, you got to play to a different distance each day. You have to ride the small boat, called “The Putter” from the tee box to the green. You can see the group in front of us returning on the right side of the photo. We only played the one day and surprising to me (and I think everyone else), I birdied the hole. For those non-golfers, that means, the hole’s score standard was 3 shots. The drive and then two putts. I hit my drive to within about fifteen feet of the hole and putted it in with only one putt.

That one hole made my whole day!

That was twelve years ago. About 55 years ago, I made the decision to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.

Based on that one decision, my life was changed forever. I’ve had to do a lot of maturing over the years. My walk with Christ has been up and down. But, with it I can rely on that one decision for assurance of my future.

Kind of like my golf trip. As the golfer, I had to hit the ball from tee to green 18 times, even though I took lessons before the trip and played at a resort-friendly course. As a Christian, it didn’t matter that my dad was a Pastor, that I grew up in church, or that I was required to pay attention during service, I had to make the decision.

As Paul tells us in Romans…

“…if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;” (Romans 10:9, NASB)

Trust the Bible on this.

That one decision will make your whole life!