“I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” (Romans 1:16)
Funeral services for soon-to-be golfing legend Payne Stewart were held recently at the First Baptist Church in Orlando, Florida, just four days after his chartered Lear 35 jet crashed in a South Dakota pasture.
Stewart won three major championships and 15 other titles during his twenty years of professional golf, but his U.S. Open victory at Pinehurst last June was as memorable as any national championship I’ve ever watched.
It was great to see and hear a man who was revered by millions give his faith the credit for helping to produce his final victory. “I’m so much more a peace with myself than I’ve ever been in my life,” Stewart was quoted to say. “Where I was with my faith last year and where I am now is leaps and bounds.”
Perhaps the saddest thing about his death is how much the national media has ignored the change about which Payne Stewart wanted everyone to know. I couldn’t help but shake my head in disappointment after I read accounts of the family’s statement, read by a friend to the media that had swarmed around his home on Monday afternoon: “We appreciate the heartfelt love and kindness shown by our friends and loved ones in our loss of Payne…Please keep the Stewart family in your prayers, along with the families of Robert Fraley, Van Ardan and the two pilots.”
Sadly, most television and print media reporters left out the middle sentence: “We know he is with the Lord and in that we take comfort.”
I was also disappointed to hear 1999 Ryder Cup Team Captain Ben Crenshaw characterize Stewart as a man who had a “wicked” sense of humor and “loved to party”. He knew that was the “Old Payne Stewart” and seemed to purposely ignore what we now know was obvious to everyone in professional golf.
The truth is the WWJD bracelet that Stewart wore on his wrist during last June’s U.S. Open Championship represented a major change in the way this man now looked at life. Sometime between 1994 and last Monday, Stewart took account of his life and committed the rest of it to Christ. He once told a USA Today reporter that the change began when he watched how fellow golfer, good friend, and born-again believer Paul Azinger had responded to cancer in 1994. “I started talking to Paul about it and saw that he had this unbelievable faith,” Stewart recalled. “That started me going in a more spiritual direction.”
But Jim Sheard and Wally Armstrong in their upcoming book, Finishing the Course: Strategies for the Back Nine of Your Life, believe that the change in Stewart was much more recent. In fact, just last week, Stewart read and personally approved their account, which reads: “For Payne Stewart, this was not some hackneyed cliché. It was a revelation of his newfound faith in Christ as his Savior. He now trusts God for the provision of his strength and for the needed balance in his life.”
Well you might fool a couple of authors about where you are in your walk with Jesus, but you’ll rarely fool your own mother, who once described her outspoken son as “rude”. Bee Stewart recently told a Sports Illustrated reporter, “Payne talks with God now. He’s a different man, a better son.”
You bet he was a different man. Over the last five years Stewart lent his name and energies for charity golf tournaments, most recently the Orlando Children’s Charities. In the five years since the tournament began, it has raised nearly $500,000 for children’s organizations.
But Stewart also put his own money where his mouth was. Less than two weeks ago, he gave $500,000 to the First Foundation, the fund-raising arm of his home church. “Tracey and our kids have more than we deserve, that’s just the way it is,” Stewart was quoted as saying. “So it’s not hard to give something back.”
Stewart’s pastor and former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Jim Henry, said Stewart “was a wonderful Christian who had Christ in his life and somehow in his death. That brought a great sense of peace to his family in a difficult and tragic time.”
So you can see how Payne Stewart’s family was able to find comfort in the middle of tragedy. They know that their husband and dad knew Jesus and they know that Jesus once said, “I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.” (John 5:25)
Payne Stewart heard that voice loud and clear.
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