Golf Church: The Narrow Way — Week Two: Love Your Enemies

“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”

Matthew 5:44–45

Welcome back to Golf Church and week two of The Narrow Way, where we're walking through some of Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount and what it actually looks like to live it.

If this is your first time here, my name is Cooper. I'm a professional golfer preparing for PGA TOUR Q-School, and every week I use this space to share a little of what God is teaching me through His Word, golf and life along the way.

This week Jesus gives us one that's really easy to read and really hard to live:

Love your enemies.

Being a professional athlete is a strange thing sometimes. When you decide to pursue something publicly, people don't just watch what you're doing. A lot of them also feel pretty comfortable telling you how you should be doing it.

Everyone has an opinion.

What I should be practicing. How much I should be playing. How much I should be resting. What tournaments I should play. What my swing should look like. What I should be doing in the gym. Whether I'm good enough. Sometimes even whether I should still be chasing this at all. And heaven forbid I make a mistake during a round of golf.

Hit one bad shot and somebody knows exactly what I've been doing wrong for the last six months. Miss a short putt and somebody has the fix. Play a bad round and people who weren't there, haven't seen the work and have no idea what was happening suddenly feel comfortable telling you exactly what went wrong.

Some people genuinely want to help. Some criticism is fair. Some advice has made me better.

And some of it is just noise.

For most of my life, I wasn't very good at telling the difference.

I would replay comments over and over. Someone could say one thing about my game and I would give that person hours of my life without them even knowing it. I'd wonder if they were right, think about what I should've said back and usually think about how I was going to prove them wrong.

Meanwhile, they probably moved on with their day. I was still having the conversation six hours later in my own head. Looking back, I understand why. As I have mentioned in other posts, for a long time, golf wasn't just something I did. Golf was where I found my identity.

A bad tournament wasn't just a bad tournament. It became evidence that maybe I didn't belong. Maybe I wasn't going to make it. Maybe everybody who doubted me was right. And when you live that way, everybody gets a vote on who you are.

That's exhausting.

One of the things God has been teaching me is that following Jesus was never meant to happen alone. As Pastor Kevin Queen says "Faith is personal, but it isn't private." God uses people to shape us, encourage us, pray for us, challenge us and sometimes help us see what we can't see ourselves.

But that doesn't mean every voice gets the same weight.

I'm learning there's a big difference between having people around me and having the right people around me.

I need people who know my story. People who will tell me the truth when I need to hear it. People who will believe in me, challenge me and pray for me. People who can remind me who I am when I'm tempted to believe what a scorecard or somebody else's opinion says about me.

The book of Acts doesn't show us a bunch of isolated Christians trying harder on their own. We see people following Jesus together.

Saul encounters Jesus personally on the road to Damascus, but almost immediately God begins surrounding him with people. Ananias comes alongside him. Barnabas advocates for him. Other believers pray with him and walk with him.

His encounter with Jesus was personal. His discipleship wasn't isolated.

That's challenging for someone like me because golf can become incredibly individual.

It's my name on the scorecard. My swing. My preparation. My result.

And our culture loves the idea of being self-made.

But the more I look at my own story, the more I realize there really isn't anything self-made about it.

God has placed a wife beside me who knows me far beyond the golfer. He's given me coaches, mentors, friends, pastors and brothers in Christ who encourage me, challenge me and pray for me. He's given me people who remind me who I am when I forget.

And that's been a huge shift, because everyone doesn't get a vote anymore. My score doesn't.

The leaderboard doesn't.

The person watching from the cart doesn't.

The person who thinks I should quit doesn't.

And honestly, even the people closest to me don't ultimately get to define me.

I love them. I listen to them. I value their wisdom.

But even their wisdom sits underneath the authority of God's Word.

Jesus gets the final word.

Before I shoot 65, I belong to Him. After I shoot 75, I still belong to Him.

When everybody understands what I'm doing, I'm His.

When nobody understands it, I'm still His.

And maybe that's actually where loving our enemies starts.

Because when I don't need somebody else's approval to know who I am, I also don't need their failure to feel better about myself.

I can forgive them, pray for them and extend grace to them without giving their voice authority over my identity.

Jesus already settled that.

And that's exactly what He tells us in Matthew 5:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

My natural reaction isn't always love.

Sometimes I want to defend myself. Sometimes I want to explain everything they don't understand. And if I'm being completely truthful, there have absolutely been times when I've wanted to succeed partly because I wanted certain people to have to watch me prove them wrong.

Then I read Jesus' words.

He doesn't say, Go prove them wrong.

He says, Love them.

He doesn't say, Win the argument.

He says, Pray for them.

That's the Narrow Way.

I'm also learning that forgiveness doesn't mean pretending something didn't hurt. It doesn't mean somebody was right, and it doesn't mean you can't have boundaries.

Forgiveness is becoming more about refusing to keep carrying something Jesus is asking me to put down. 

Don't keep replaying the argument. Don't let resentment take up space in my mind. Don't secretly hope something goes wrong for somebody so you feel vindicated.

Give it to Jesus. What do we do after we give it to Jesus? Pray.

Pray for them.

It's one thing to decide I'm not going to stay angry with somebody. It's another thing to genuinely pray that God would bless them, work in their life, take care of their family and draw them closer to Him.

My coach has a saying that's become really important to me:

“Breathe in gratitude and breathe out grace.”

I love that, especially on a golf course, because golf gives you plenty of opportunities to do the exact opposite.

You hit a bad shot. Miss a putt. Get a bad bounce. Hear a comment. Get frustrated and suddenly you're carrying the last hole into the next one.

When I breathe in gratitude, I'm reminding myself: Thank You, Jesus, that I get to be here. Thank You that I get to play this game. Thank You for another shot. Thank You that my identity isn't riding on where this golf ball goes. Thank You that I'm Yours.

Then I breathe out grace.

Grace for myself when I make a mistake. Grace for my caddie. Grace for my playing partners. Grace for the person watching. Grace for the person who made the comment. Grace for the person I'd really like to prove wrong.

Because how can I spend my life celebrating the grace Jesus has given me while refusing to extend grace to somebody else?

For years, I think there were times I was playing golf against people who weren't even on the golf course.

Trying to prove something.

To critics. To people who doubted. Probably to myself more than anybody.

That's a heavy golf bag to carry.

Jesus is teaching us to put it down.

I'm not going to Q-School to prove somebody wrong. I'm going because I believe this is the mission God has called me to.

I'm going to prepare as well as I possibly can, show up and compete my butt off. I want to beat the guys I'm playing against. That's competition, and I love competition.

Following Jesus doesn't mean I suddenly stop wanting to compete or stop wanting to win. It means the person standing across from me doesn't have to become my enemy just because we're both trying to beat each other. I can want to win with everything I have and still want good for them. I can compete hard without carrying hatred, jealousy or resentment in my heart.

And I think that's where Jesus' teaching really starts to challenge us, because loving people who are for us isn't all that difficult. What about the person competing against us? The person criticizing us? The person who has hurt us or who we know doesn't really want to see us succeed?

Toward the end of this passage, Jesus asks:

“If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?”

It's easy to love people who love you back.

Jesus says His followers should look different.

Love the difficult person. Pray for the person talking about you. Forgive the person who hurt you. Give grace to the person who doesn't deserve it.

Not because they earned it.

Because neither did I.

Jesus didn't wait for me to get my life together before He loved me. Romans 5:8 tells us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

So when Jesus asks me to love somebody who doesn't deserve my love, He's not asking me to give something I haven't already received. And remember that the "somebody" Jesus is asking you to love, is EVERYONE. 

He's asking us to live from what He's already given us.

I definitely haven't mastered that.

But He's teaching me.

Listen closely to the people God has intentionally placed around you.

Hold their wisdom underneath His Word.

Let the noise be noise.

Forgive quickly.

Pray for the people we'd rather prove wrong.

And give people something they may not deserve, something Jesus has freely given:

Grace.

Prayer

Jesus,

Thank You that my identity isn't found in what people say about me, what I accomplish or what number I write on a scorecard. Thank You that because of You, I know who I am and Whose I am.

Thank You for the people You've intentionally placed around me. Give me humility to listen when You're using someone to challenge me, wisdom to know which voices deserve weight and discernment to let go of the noise.

Teach me to forgive quickly and help me stop carrying conversations You never asked me to carry.

Help me love the people who are difficult for me to love and pray for the people I'd rather prove wrong. Remind me of the grace You've given me so freely and teach me to give that same grace away.

Let the way I compete, speak, forgive and love point people back to You.

Breathe in gratitude.

Breathe out grace.

Amen.

Take It to the Tee

This week, pay attention to whose voice you're allowing to shape you.

Do you have people around you who actually know you, pray for you, challenge you and continually point you back to Jesus?

Then think about the person whose words still take up space in your head.

Maybe they criticized you. Maybe they betrayed you. Maybe they embarrassed you, doubted you or simply got under your skin.

You don't have to pretend it didn't hurt.

But you also don't have to keep carrying it.

So this week, actually do what Jesus said.

Pray for them. Ask God to bless them. Ask Him to work in their life. Ask Him to help you forgive them. Then remember who gets the final word over your life.

Jesus.

So take a breath.

Breathe in gratitude. Breathe out grace.