Pat Jones / Lead Pastor

Sharing Jesus in Golf

I decided to use my passion for golf to accomplish a greater goal this season. I signed up for a community league. It ended up to be an open league in which I played with the same two men each week. I was away a few of those weeks and asked Terry Geartz to serve as my substitute. My main goal was not good golf. Week to week, the level of my golfing was varied as is usually true in golf. But my goal was to build relationship with these two guys, pray for them, and look for an opportunity to show Jesus to them.

I never got to a point yet with them where I was able to share the Gospel. But the last night of our league, I wanted to do something nice for them. We had anticipated that the course was going to do something to provide a small prize or competition for our league but that never materialized. So for our final night, I gathered some “prizes” and took them along. I told my two partners that they were in competition for first and second place and their prizes awaited them following the round. 

It was fun to watch the evening and they seemed touched to receive the small gifts. Included in the prizes for each one was a special book about golf that also shares the Gospel in a powerful way. So in that way, I have shared the Gospel with them.

I gave them my card and told them I would look forward to playing with them other times. Now I am praying that I will get a call. Long ago I read a quote that touched me. Witnessing is sharing Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and letting the results to God. I tried to demonstrate the love of Christ to my two new friends over the sixteen weeks and used words of encouragement along the way. Now I am praying for them regularly. I realized it is not that hard to think strategically about sharing the love of Jesus. We simply have to think about what we do every day and remember that we take Jesus with us wherever we go. And we don’t do this alone, we look for partners (like Terry) to help.