Romans 9:19-20
You will say to me then, "Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?" But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me like this?"
There are many professional golfers throughout the years who you may not have ever heard of. Obviously there are the journeyman professionals who never played on television but also many PGA Tour players and even some major champions go forgotten in the mind of an average golf fan. There is no fault in that, after all we have many other more important things to remember in our daily lives than who won the 1982 PGA Championship, even though it could have been someones crowning achievement at that time.
People will remember the names of Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Seve Ballesteros, and many others long after they have finished playing. Rightly so, those players have earned that reputation with their play. However, some of the best stories come from those you probably never saw on a TV screen.
One such story is from a professional named Joe Daly. If you've never heard of Joe allow me to tell you a little bit about him and what might be the one of the worst "breaks" in golf history.
Joe Daly grew up in Pennsylvania and played for Old Dominion University. After school he became a wholesale credit manager and didn't turn pro until 1992 at the age of 32. Five years after turning pro he earned a Nationwide Tour Card (level below PGA) and made it to the PGA Tour in 1998. He fell back one more time to the Nationwide in 1999 and went to qualifying school in the fall of 99' in trying to make it back to the PGA Tour.
From what I can tell by reading some old articles Joe was playing solid in the final stage of qualifying school and approached his last hole two shots inside the cut line. He was in the 4th of 6 rounds and looked to be heading back to the PGA Tour. The 18th hole at PGA West where he was playing is a difficult hole, with water hazards very much in play. Joe hit a shot in the water and by the time he approached the green he faced a four foot putt for a double bogey, which would keep him right on the cut line with two rounds to play. He hit a great putt that looked to be going right into the middle of the cup and then this happened...
.
Joe's ball hit the back of the cup dead center with perfect pace, and because the cup had not been installed properly that morning, the ball somehow managed to hit the back edge of the plastic perfectly and hop back out of the hole.( Click Here To Watch Joe's Final Putt ) He still had two rounds to play, but would end up missing his PGA Tour card by one stroke
This really is like something out of a professional golf nightmare. Joe never made it back to the PGA Tour. He was quoted saying that putt is "ancient history" and he no longer lets it define his career. Joe was resilient and went on to have a successful senior tour career and even won a Senior PGA Championship.
What comes to my mind is how many of his friends, family, and people in his life said to Joe following that infamous putt at qualifying school "Joe, I'm sorry that putt was just bad luck." I would think the answer is probably around the same amount that told him, "Hey Joe good luck this week!".
What are we truly saying when we use the term luck? By the dictionary definition we are saying:
If I believe in a Sovereign, All Powerful, All Knowing God, then I can't believe luck exists.
I didn't always believe this though, and up until this past April there was one area of my life I wrestled with this concept on almost a daily basis for at least a year. You probably guessed it, golf!
When you work hard at your craft, it's easy to take pride in it.
Ever since I started playing tournament golf and my results gradually kept getting better, the world and people around me have been quick to give me praise. "Keep up the good work" and "Your hard work is paying off", were both phrases my pride loved to hear whenever I achieved a new level of success. These types of comments were always well meant, but for me they helped feed the idea that I owned my success and I was solely responsible for attaining it. If you added up the endless hours of practice, the effort involved, plus the resources spent, I very much believed I solely owned any success that came my way. Once I became a Christian, and I still saw continued success my thinking was "Great! God is going to help me prosper and grow because I want to do this for Him."
Like a whiny child who cries when you take away his candy, I only started to question God's sovereignty in my golf game until I ran into some adversity and started to struggle. My childish thoughts went like "If I am working hard, want to glorify God, and He is sovereign, why is He allowing me to struggle like this? Why would I miss this cut by a shot, or have a worse results than last year? Doesn't God want me to succeed?"
I battled with those I trusted about this idea. My main questions were:
1. Is God causing me to fail?
2. Is my effort worthless if God is sovereign over results?
3. In a game where there are an endless amount of changing variables, how can I grasp God's control?
4. If God is sovereign over my results then am I just a puppet on a string?
I wrestled with these ideas for quite some time, probably around a year like I previously mentioned, until it all came down a point of surrender.
After having missed at first stage of qualifying school by one shot I went back to Florida for the winter to work and prepare for the upcoming season. My play the previous year was mediocre, and over the winter it started to get worse. I continued to work as hard as I could and try to do the correct things to maximize my chances, but under tournament conditions, things continued to go wrong. With about two weeks left before I migrated north for the summer, I felt as unprepared for the upcoming season as I ever had. My bank account showed it, my scoring average showed it. I was not exactly trending in the right direction. I don't think I had broke 70 in a tournament in 4 months.
I did have one event left, a two day tournament that is my biggest event in the winter, and one that I felt could be a great opportunity to turn the ship in the right direction. Excited and prepared I walked to the first tee ready for success. If you could have followed via some golf app it would have looked like this:
Tee shot 50 yards into the jungle.
Drop into sand, hit 7iron into tree deflected into more sand.
Angrily gouged the next shot back into the fairway.
Thinned an easy pitch shot to about 15 feet from the hole.
Made the 15 foot putt for double bogey.
The entire 20 minutes it took me to make that double bogey I was blaming God. I knew He was sovereign. I knew I was failing. I felt like my golf career was coming to an end(laughable). I felt like a puppet who's strings were being pulled in a direction he didn't want to go. I was thinking of all the times I have missed by a cut by one shot, all the struggle I had been going through with my game. It sounds silly, but in that moment a double bogey pretty much broke the pride in my own golf success. My next move was to stand off to the side of the green for about 20 seconds while my playing partners finished the hole.
My prayer was something like, "Lord, I know you are in control, and if it is your will for me to shoot 80 today, for my golf career to end or change directions, then I will do so to the best of my ability. I trust you more than I trust myself." Then this happened.
Like a whiny child who cries when you take away his candy, I only started to question God's sovereignty in my golf game until I ran into some adversity and started to struggle. My childish thoughts went like "If I am working hard, want to glorify God, and He is sovereign, why is He allowing me to struggle like this? Why would I miss this cut by a shot, or have a worse results than last year? Doesn't God want me to succeed?"
I battled with those I trusted about this idea. My main questions were:
1. Is God causing me to fail?
2. Is my effort worthless if God is sovereign over results?
3. In a game where there are an endless amount of changing variables, how can I grasp God's control?
4. If God is sovereign over my results then am I just a puppet on a string?
I wrestled with these ideas for quite some time, probably around a year like I previously mentioned, until it all came down a point of surrender.
After having missed at first stage of qualifying school by one shot I went back to Florida for the winter to work and prepare for the upcoming season. My play the previous year was mediocre, and over the winter it started to get worse. I continued to work as hard as I could and try to do the correct things to maximize my chances, but under tournament conditions, things continued to go wrong. With about two weeks left before I migrated north for the summer, I felt as unprepared for the upcoming season as I ever had. My bank account showed it, my scoring average showed it. I was not exactly trending in the right direction. I don't think I had broke 70 in a tournament in 4 months.
I did have one event left, a two day tournament that is my biggest event in the winter, and one that I felt could be a great opportunity to turn the ship in the right direction. Excited and prepared I walked to the first tee ready for success. If you could have followed via some golf app it would have looked like this:
Tee shot 50 yards into the jungle.
Drop into sand, hit 7iron into tree deflected into more sand.
Angrily gouged the next shot back into the fairway.
Thinned an easy pitch shot to about 15 feet from the hole.
Made the 15 foot putt for double bogey.
The entire 20 minutes it took me to make that double bogey I was blaming God. I knew He was sovereign. I knew I was failing. I felt like my golf career was coming to an end(laughable). I felt like a puppet who's strings were being pulled in a direction he didn't want to go. I was thinking of all the times I have missed by a cut by one shot, all the struggle I had been going through with my game. It sounds silly, but in that moment a double bogey pretty much broke the pride in my own golf success. My next move was to stand off to the side of the green for about 20 seconds while my playing partners finished the hole.
My prayer was something like, "Lord, I know you are in control, and if it is your will for me to shoot 80 today, for my golf career to end or change directions, then I will do so to the best of my ability. I trust you more than I trust myself." Then this happened.
I've listened to multiple friends and co-workers laugh when a golfer has won and thanked the Lord for their success. A line I heard recently was "Did Jesus tell him to hit a 4 iron?"
It is a joke among non-believers to use #blessed on social media in a sarcastic way to mock those who actually know they don't control the blessing they receive. It is truly sad they are blind to seeing the truth. Yes I was blessed to win that tournament, and to have an opportunity to continue competing, but also to know the One who provides it.
You may be thinking, "Matt are you saying God made you win?" You may also think I'm saying "God made Joe Daly miss that putt." You could also think, "Joe should have just played better and the putt that rimmed out wouldn't have mattered."
I'm not saying any of those things. I'm saying I've come to understand the relationship between God's will and my own is something that I will never be able to fully comprehend. Just like I will never be able to fully comprehend how God made the earth you and I inhabit, that doesn't change its obvious truth. I don't believe two random atoms(that also appeared by chance) collided together by pure luck and created humans, the oceans, the land, the stars, the sun and moon, and all of this creation we see every day. That luck just doesn't exist, but God does exist.
I am simply the clay made by the clay maker. The tiny human brain I have could not ever grasp something as complex as that. What I won't do is believe what the world says regarding luck and happenstance. What I will do is trust that God is good and what He says is true.
Does Gods sovereignty mean we should sit back and do nothing about our lives or our work? It absolutely does not. As a Christian I'm called to work with all my heart as if I was working for the Lord. I have to show up and put the work in every day, just like everyone else does. I'm put here to be a workman not a director. The concept between God's will and man's will is one that people have wrestled with for as long as man has walked this earth. I've come to peace about it and am not here to tell you I have the answer, but that I know why I wrestled with it. I wanted complete control because I wasn't trusting the One who ultimately has control.
If you think I'm crazy I'd ask you to really sit down and think. Be real about how much control you actually have over every little thing in your life. If you are humble enough to admit that you know you don't have complete control then maybe you're also humble enough to admit that you haven't lived a perfect life either. I know I haven't, when I stand before God after I've left this earth I will be guilty just like every single other person who reads this. Similar to any success I may have, my salvation and being made right with God is something I'll never be able to do on my own. No amount of work, effort, good deeds, or blog posts will ever be enough to satisfy the sins I have committed in front of a perfect God.
I need major help...
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
