07/03/20 God, the Gospel and Golf #1 — For the last few years I’ve played a lot of golf, often 3 to 5 times a week! And I’ve noticed many similarities between trying to get the golf ball in the hole and trying to get the Gospel into the hearts and souls of people.

In seminary I wrote a paper analyzing all the sermons in the book of Acts. Almost without exception, when the audience was Jewish, the preacher started with Jesus. But for non-Jewish audiences he started with God and creation. That makes sense. The Jews were familiar with the OT Scriptures and, especially, God’s promise to send His Messiah to deliver them. But one could not assume that non-Jews had any idea whatsoever of even the existence of the One and Only True God, Yahweh, much less His commands, expectations, blessings for obedience and consequences for disobedience!

In golf some holes are par 3, some par 4 and some par 5. Par 3 holes are typically 100 to 200 yards; par 4’s, 300 to 400 yards; and par 5’s, often more than 500 yards. Golfers need very different clubs to “finish” these (i.e. get the ball into the hole) in as few strokes as possible. Just for fun some golfers have attempted to play entire rounds of golf using only one club. But this is DEFINITELY NOT the way to get the BEST SCORE!

In the same way, when sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ, you need several different “clubs” depending on the spiritual and biblical knowledge, background and receptivity of the listener(s). PLUS it takes PRACTICE to determine which approaches work best for you. Let’s GET BUSY—“Hit ‘em Long and hit ‘em Straight!”