Amateur Followers of God Desert diary from Wednesday, December 08, 2004 Background: My family and I were watching the movie "Bobby Jones" the other night and there was an amazing truth in it for me. Bobby was an amateur golfer back in the 1920s. He grew up a pretty sickly kid, but lived near a golf course. He loved playing golf and got to be one of the best golfers in history by his teenage years. He was winning tournaments as a teenager against professionals, but he never made any money as a golfer. He never turned professional. He went on to be the only golfer in history to win the "grand slam" of golf, all 4 major tournaments in the world in the same year. No one has ever done it except for him, not even Tiger Woods. In the movie, he was confronted by an irritated professional golfer, saying, "What are you trying to prove Bobby? You are making the rest of us look bad. When are you going to make some money like the rest of us?" Bobby replied, "Do you know the meaning of 'amateur'? It's from the Latin root word for LOVE. An amateur does it for love, not money." Bobby went on to retire in his twenties from tournament golf to spend the rest of his life as an obscure Lawyer in Augusta Georgia with his loving Wife and children. He got a degree in Literature and a Law degree from Harvard. But he did do one more thing as an amateur golfer... In 1934 he put together a golf course called Augusta National where they play "the Masters". Cool meditation that I got from a golf movie: I think its awesome that the best golfer of all time was an amateur. I've always mistakenly placed the professionals of a sport as being better than amateurs, but apparently at least in Golf, it's an amateur who is the best of all time. Similarly, the greatest apostles and prophets were amateurs (lovers). They were doing it for the love of Christ. The old testament prophets, John the Baptist from the desert, Jesus the carpenter/side preacher, Paul the professional "Hebrew of Hebrews" converted to an amateur ("I count it all dung ...") after encountering Christ.. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with deriving a living from the ministry, on the contrary, many professional ministers ARE amateurs at heart. But we should always be amateurs FIRST and foremost. My daily meditation the last few days is that the Lord would make me an amateur follower of Christ for the rest of my life... To follow him purely for the love of HIM, not for any of the benefits. Hurray for the amateurs! Brother Greg[/b]