If you take a gimme, take a mulligan, or improve your lie, you are a cheating golfer.  If you break any rule whatsoever and turn a score card in that does not match what actually happened, you are disqualified from the round.  I love golf, even when I am playing poorly, and even more when I am playing well.  I shot an 84 yesterday and I followed all of the rules.  Aaron Hoback can vouch.

How would I be able to brag about my score if I had cheated in the slightest?  I wouldn’t.  I would be a liar, and my integrity would be lost.

See after my full round of 18, I played another 9 holes.  During that 9 hole round, I putted my ball into the hole without removing the flagstick, which is a two stroke penalty.  The putt was for par, and since I was and was not really keeping score for this 9 holes, I put down a par with an asterisk next to it, and told my playing partner that I had done so.  He responded “I don’t think it really matters.”  To which I responded “if you can bend your integrity here, you can bend your integrity anywhere.”

If you bend your integrity in one place, you can easily bend it in others.

Golf is perfect for me because I like the legalistic rules that you must follow.  As a christ follower I also understand that God is full of GRACE and love and mercy.  None of which apply to the golf course, but guess what, GOLF is not life.  It is a game.

When we sin, and our lives are not the perfection that we want them to be, we need not assess ourselves a penalty stroke.  We need not beat our selves up.  We need only to rely on the love and forgiveness that God is constantly shoveling out onto us.

We move on.

We sin no more.

We live with guilt no more.

We are loved much more.