Hey Partners & Friends,
An excellent golfer once told me about his favorite shot in the game of golf. I was expecting him to say something like my favorite shot is the drive, or the chip shot or even the putt. Surprisingly it was not any of those, what he said was intriguing. He said his favorite shot in golf is the recovery shot! Think about that. Everyone finds themselves in a bad place occasionally. No one ever hits every shot perfectly, everyone duffs, shanks, or screws up a shot once in awhile, some of us do it quite frequently, and then there are those of us whose whole game is a disaster.
But what do we do when one or all these things happen? What choices do we have? We can quit, through our clubs in the lake, we can cuss and fuss, stomp and gripe. We can get mad get sad and continue to play bad OR we can go to our ball (if we can find it:) and do our very best to hit the next shot well. We can, to the best of our ability do the next right thing no matter how bad our past shots have been. The Recovery Shot!
It’s the same in the only game that matters-life. We may have had a really bad start. We may feel as though we have made a total mess of things and maybe we have. So what. No one does this perfectly, everyone has screwed up repeatedly, made mistakes, disobeyed God, hurt other people, sinned, all of us have. Just like in golf we don’t hit every shot well. And just like in golf we have a choice to make. What will we do next, quit? Oh poor me I just cant do it, throw our lives in the lake of hopelessness and give up. Or maybe we will get mad, throw caution to the wind cussing and fussing, compounding the problem with more bad behavior making it ten times worse on ourselves and others.
We do have another choice-“the recovery shot” if we get sick of doing it wrong we can change how we are approaching the game. Address the ball the right way. Address your life the right way. Recognize we have been doing it wrong and stop hacking at life. It’s called repentance. Seek help from people who have made some good recovery shots and are now playing well. Living one day at a time enjoying one moment at a time, playing the best they can till we get to the 19th hole. It is also essential to listen and follow the instructions of someone who knows how to do it well, in the game of life that would be Jesus Christ, He is the only one who has ever done it perfectly and He has made a way for us. Celebrate Recovery is a group of people who have learned that no situation is beyond help, with Jesus Christ there is always a way out of the trap. Life is kind of like golf, no one plays a perfect game. Everyone must learn how to hit a recovery shot.
Celebrating Recovery,
Jim & Pam