Make Me to Know Your Ways

Make Me to Know Your Ways. Starting in 1950, Jack Grout became “the first and only” golf teacher to legendary PGA, Hall of Fame, golfer Jack Nicklaus (Jack Nicklaus, The Greatest Game of All, [1969], 60). Already an excellent golfer at 10 years old in 1950 and throughout his amateur (1959-1961) and professional (1962-1986) careers, Nicklaus at the beginning of each golf season would nevertheless return to Grout and say, “Teach me to golf.” From scratch, as if unfamiliar, Grout would mentor and modify Nicklaus in the fundamentals of golf (Jack Nicklaus, My Story [2003]). It is easy to detect Grout’s coaching in Nicklaus’ explanation of his approach to the sport: “Focus on remedies, not faults” (Ken Bowden, Jack Nicklaus, [1990], 31). “[Grout] knew the golf swing probably as well as any instructor ever has … He wanted you not only to be skilled technically, but also to be so confident of your skills that you could identify and fix your own swing flaws even in the heat of battle, even without him there by your side. In other words, Jack Grout worked to be dispensable. He wanted his students to be able to function at the highest level without him” (Dick Grout, Jack Grout, A Legacy in Golf [2012].

I may know how to swing an axe and how to choke up on the bat to swing with two strikes, but I have no idea how to swing a golf club. I have never golfed. I’ve never even been on a golf course except once in the late 1980s for an afternoon of short-lived, unauthorized sledding. I don’t watch golf except when I want something calm on the television behind Sunday afternoon naps. To my chagrin, I had to research which Jack is the golfer (Jack Nicklaus) and which Jack is the actor (Jack Nicholson). Yet, I gravitate to Grout’s philosophy of coaching, working to be dispensable. In the realm of Christian ministry, for teaching others to follow not the human teacher but the Lord Jesus, dispensability is a must. Though the principle appears in Scripture, the practice is oddly absent in modern ministry. Dispensability works against building job security, I suppose. Yet the weight of the idea is enormous, teaching others how to think more than what to think. It is perfectly shaped for local pastoring and wonderfully adaptable to international missions. Yet even more than Grout, I galvanize around Nicklaus’ humility in learning, “Teach me to golf.” He was the opposite of a know-it-all.

Making the transition from sport to Scripture is smooth. It is easy to detect God’s heart in David’s appetite to learn. “Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long” (Psa. 25:4-5). In a time when the priesthood was decimated (Saul’s massacre of the priests at Nob) and way-laid by sin (Eli’s long-lasting curse on his branch of the high priestly line), David was a principal teacher in Israel. Yet, his posture was that of a learner first, wholly dependent upon God to teach him about God in view of teaching others about God. “Make me to know,” from scratch, as if unfamiliar, David returns humbly to God for review of the fundamentals about God.