Golf is a fickle mistress. She doesn't always allow you to do the same thing twice in the same month let alone in the same round. Beautiful high arching shots that land on the green, as Sam Snead once said, "as soft as a butterfly with sore feet" can suddenly become low, twisting line drives that rocket into the fields of bushes that the butterflies inhabit.
That sure putting stroke which canned putt after putt to save par after a not-so-brilliant chip suddenly leaves you eight feet short on a five foot putt. It's called the "yips," but no one says, "Yippee," when they get them. Even professional golfers occasionally get the yips. You can tell which ones they are. They're the ones who are going home on Friday after shooting eight over for the first two days.
The bottom line is this; nothing comes easy without hard work. Those incredibly fluid golf swings we see on weekends from the professionals toiling on perfectly manicured strips of real estate in famous places are the result of years of hitting thousands of balls a day. Many pros have actually hit five thousand balls for each swing mechanic they are trying to learn just to ingrain it deeply in muscle memory.
Life in Christ should be so easy. The biggest change is that we do what we call repent when we come to the Lord. We turn around, or at least we are supposed to turn around. We were formerly headed to hell and are now on the path to heaven. That is a turnaround. But have we been converted? "Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord." Acts 4:19
We previously were slicing our lives out-of-bounds, yipping our souls past their intended goals. We need an overhaul, an infusion of new knowledge which evidently wasn't ours before. It takes hard work. "Be dilligent to present yourself approved unto God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." 2 Timothy 2:15 Time to convert that old sluggish game to the one God wants. Time to hit the spiritual driving range and straighten out our game.