I Want To Be Faithful

“Many years ago the legendary golf pro Gary Player was hitting balls off the practice tee one morning, and the first ball he hit went 280 yards straight as a bullet.  A guy in the gallery just within earshot said, ‘Man, I’d give anything to be able to hit a golf ball like you.’  Gary walked over to the guy and said, ‘No, you wouldn’t.’  The guy said, ‘Yes, I would.  I’d give anything to hit like that,’  Gary said, ‘No, you wouldn’t.  You wouldn’t be willing to do what it takes.  You have to rise early in the morning and hit five hundred balls until your hands bleed.  Then you stop, tape your hands, and hit five hundred more balls.  The next morning you’re out there again with hands so raw you can barely hold your club, but you do it all over again.  If you do that through enough years of pain, then you can hit a ball like that.’  Player won more than 160 professional golf tournaments and is a member of “the big three” -- along with Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer -- who dominated golf through the 1960’s and 1970’s” (Bob Merritt, 7 Simple Choices for a Better Tomorrow, p. 136).
Do you have a fellow Christian whom you admire?  Perhaps you have even said, “I wish I was as faithful as Brother or Sister ________.  Is that really what you desire?  You do realize that they weren’t born with a “faithfulness gene”, don’t you?  Although their parents or grandparents may have encouraged them along the path, faithfulness is not something that can be inherited.
How does one become faithful?  P-R-A-C-T-I-C-E!  “But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil” (Hebrews 5:14).  “The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you” (Philippians 4:9).
The road to faithfulness runs through the practice field.  There is no shortcut.

God loves you!

Mike