In one of his books Max
Lucado tells the story of being given tickets to attend to the Masters Golf
Tournament in Augusta, GA. For those of you who aren’t golf fans let me tell
you that the Masters is the World Series or Super Bowl of golf. Tickets are
extremely rare and extravagantly expensive. But because Max was good friends
with a pro golfer, he was given tickets.
Max wrote: “So off we went to
Augusta National Country Club in Augusta, Georgia where golf heritage hangs
like moss from the trees. This was the place where legends were made and I was
like a kid in a candy store. I couldn’t get enough. It wasn’t enough to see the
grounds and walk the course, I wanted to see the locker room. That’s where the
players hang out and that’s where I wanted to be.
As I walked towards the entrance, a guard stopped me. I
showed him my pass, but he shook his head. I told him I was ‘a guest of so-and-so,
you know, the pro golfer.’ The guard replied, ‘I’m sorry sir, but your name
isn’t on the list of caddies and players’ All of name-dropping and cajoling
would not make the guard budge. It didn’t matter that I was a pastor or that I
had authored several Christian books. I was turned away right at the entrance
because my name wasn’t on the list and I didn’t have the right credentials.
This will happen to many people at the most important
place of all—the gate of heaven. They will be turned away because their name
isn’t recorded in God’s Book. They may be God-fearing and church-attending and
have a long list of accomplishments, but if they don’t know Christ and He
doesn’t know them, then it’s all in vain.”
Later on, Max did get in
to the coveted locker room. His golfer buddy who gave him the tickets asked Max
if he wanted to be his caddy for a day. In order to be a caddy at the Masters,
one has to wear a set of special white overalls. Max explained, “Later that weekend,
I made my way to the clubhouse. And through the same door, walking past the
same guard, I stepped into the golfing inner sanctum. What made the difference?
One day I was turned away, the next I was welcomed. Why the change. Simple, I
was wearing the right clothes.” [i]
If you and I are going to
step into heaven it will be because we’ve been clothed in the righteousness of
Christ and we have had our old sin-stained garments removed.
As Paul says in Colossians
3:9-12, “9 seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and
have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image
of its creator . . . 12 Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved,
compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” -DM
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