Hangin' in the rough...

OK, full disclosure here, I am an avid golf fan. I don't care if it's a Sunday at the Masters or the first round of the Dinah Shore Classic, I am all about the links. I often joke with my father that heaven must be a beautiful day where the sky is blue and all 18 holes are open on the golf course. So before going on, I want to provide fair warning that there will be many golf terms in here that will be broken down in its most laymen of terms.

Today is the beginning of the 115th US Open, which is one of the four major championships of the PGA. For the next four days the world's best golfers will head up to Chambers Bay near Seattle to compete for the silver jug. Leading up to the tournament all of the talk about not just who would win but instead who will overcome the rough conditions of the course.

There has been a lot of complaining from the most professional golfers about the design of the course, with the potential of several floating pars and terrain that you wouldn't drive a 4-Runner through. The course is full of sand and little grass, likening it to the conditions usually reserved for the British Open. Whether the concerns about the course are true or not, the fact that there are rumblings point to what could be a very interesting weekend of excuses if the scores are low.

However, I think there is a lesson to be applied here and that's this: Nothing is supposed to be easy, especially at this level. When it comes to obtaining any major goal in life, there needs to be a great level of difficulty. It's as the old saying goes, "Tough times never last but tough people do." Difficulty exposes character, whether one has it or not.

Caleb could've easily did what the other spies did in Numbers 13 and backed away when he saw the giants in the Promised Land, but said, "We can take the land!" He didn't look to the difficulty, he looked to the goal. Often we will count the costs when it comes to a huge task and say, "It's too much, I won't do it."

Each of us come to a point in our lives where we have to step out in faith, not just faith in Christ, but the faith OF Christ, which says, "It's done." It takes going beyond our human thinking when we see a tough situation ahead of us, but instead of murmuring and complaining, we need to step out of the boat and say, "It's done, and nothing will stand in my way."