Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Hi, everybody. I'm Pastor Chuck Allen. And thanks so much for joining me on today's weekday podcast where today I want to talk about putt putt golf.
I know putt putt golf. You know what I'm talking about there, right? Those little courses with the windmills and the dinosaurs and the impossibly tiny holes. When you take your kids on a Saturday afternoon and you pretend like you're not taking it way too seriously, I. Hello, guys.
We're grown adults. Spend 20 minutes lining up a two foot putt like they're playing to win Augusta. But here's what, what hit me the other day when I. I was literally playing putt putt golf.
I'm watching this dad with his kid, little daughter at one of these places. What if. What if putt putt golf is actually the most accurate picture we have of how God sees us?
Just stay with me. Stay with me. See, real gol. Real golf is hard. You need lessons. You need the right equipment. You need to understand wind patterns and lie angles and all these complicated things.
Most of us, we're terrible at real golf. I know I am. But putt putt, that's designed for everybody. The five year old and the 50 year old can play the same course. The obstacles, they aren't there to keep you out. They're there to make it fun. And I'm watching this dad and his daughter hit her ball and it bounces off three walls, rolls backward, nearly goes into the water hazard that's really just like little blue painted concrete. And somehow, somehow it ends up in the hole. And she jumps up and down like she just won the Masters. And the dad is celebrating like she actually did.
That's when it hit me. Jesus says this in Matthew 19:14.
He says, But Jesus said, let the little children come to me. Don't stop them. For the kingdom of heaven belongs to those who are like these children.
The kingdom of heaven belongs to those who are like children. Think about that little girl for a second. She didn't care that her shot was messy. She didn't care that it took the scenic route. She didn't care that it wasn't technically skillful. All she cared about was it went in the hole and she celebrated. What if that's how God sees our life? What if God isn't sitting up there with a scorecard marking down everything that we did? We bank our prayers off the wrong wall or we take the long way around to get where we're supposed to be going? What if God is actually celebrating there's? A story that Jesus tells in Luke 15 about a woman who loses a coin, one coin out of ten.
And the Bible says, she lights a lamp and sweeps the entire house and searches carefully until she finds it. And when she finds it, the Bible says, and when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors and says, rejoice with me because I found my lost coin. She throws a party over one coin. That's putt putt golf, y'.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: All.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: That's a celebration over something that to the outside world, might not seem like that big of a deal, but to her, to her, it was everything.
I think about Moses, you know, Guy had a speech impediment. Probably would have been terrible at public speaking seminars, but God didn't say, well, I guess I need to find someone more qualified. God said, you're my dude.
We'll figure out the details. And Moses. Moses hits his ball off the clown's nose, bounces it off the castle wall, and somehow leads an entire nation out of slavery. Hole in one.
Gideon. He's hiding in a wine press, scared of his own shadow. When God called him him a mighty warrior, Gideon probably would have said, you know what?
I think you got the wrong guy, Lord. But God was already celebrating the victory. David was just a kid with a slingshot facing a giant with a sword. From a putt putt perspective, that's like trying to get your ball through the windmill while it's moving. Impossible, right? Except it wasn't. Because sometimes. Sometimes the most unlikely shots are the ones that go in.
What if your life isn't a mistake?
What if all those times you felt like you were taking the scenic route, bouncing off walls, going in the wrong direction. What if that wasn't failure?
What if that was just your unique path to the hole? See, here's the thing about putt putt golf that I think we miss. Every hole is designed to be completed.
Think about that. Every single hole, no matter how crazy it looks, no matter how many obstacles there are, no matter how many. How many things it seems impossible about it. It's designed to be finished. The course designer didn't put a hole there that couldn't be reached. Ephesians 2:10 says this, for we are God's masterpiece.
He has created us anew in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: He.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: We are God's masterpiece. Masterpiece, y'.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: All.
[00:05:04] Speaker B: Not God's mistake. Not God's backup plan. Not God's. Well, I guess it'll have to do. Masterpiece.
I just Think that's awesome. I think about that little girl again, jumping up and down after her impossible shot. Pure joy. No self consciousness. No worry about anyone else, what they thought about her. Just pure celebration.
What if we live like that today? What if we celebrated the little things in our lives the way she celebrated getting her ball in that hole? What if we stopped worrying about whether our path looked like everybody else's? What if we trusted that the course designer knows what he's doing? Here's what I think happens when we really get this. We stop being so hard on ourselves when we hit the wall.
We stop seeing everything as an obstacle. And it's part of the fun instead of evidence that we're failing. We begin to trust that even when we can't see how we're going to get there, the hole's still reachable. And maybe, just maybe, we start celebrating other people's crazy shots, too. Maybe we stop keeping score and start cheering each other on.
Psalm 139:16 puts it this way. God, you saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. Every day of your life, it was recorded. Every moment laid out.
That includes the victories that don't look like victories to anybody else. That includes the times when you take the long way around and when you bounce off the walls. God's not up there frustrated that you're not playing real golf, y'.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: All.
[00:06:36] Speaker B: God designed this to be putt putt. God made it accessible. God made it fun. God is celebrating every time your ball goes in, no matter how you got there.
This is the Weekday Podcast. I'm Chuck Allen.
Today, go play like a kid. Celebrate the victories, trust the course designer, and remember, every hole is designed to be completed. Thanks for listening today to the Weekday Podcast.
