Allow me to explain the name….

If you’re anything like me, you are curious how or why people choose titles for blogs, bands etc.  This blog title comes from an inspiring book I recently finished. Golf’s Sacred Journey by David L. Cook is now a movie titled Seven Days in Utopia starring Lucas Black and Robert Duvall.  I highly recommend both the book and the movie. 

David L.Cook has been a coach to professional athletes as well as Fortune 500 executives.  In the book introduction, he says “I have compressed my twenty-plus years of peak performance coaching into a story of two fictional characters: a rancher with a passion for teaching truth and a young golf professional at the end of his rope. They represent each of us in the various stages of growth.”

Johnny is the rancher/teacher and Luke is the student.  Johnny offers Luke one week of lessons to regain his golf game.  I know very little about golf, but it’s easy to see these lessons are more about life than they are about a game.  Here is a small summary of what I learned from this book.

1. Have conviction: know why you do things in the manner you do them.  This keeps you from being shaken when others question you.  
2. Find your rhythm and balance, these allow you to have freedom and patience.  This keeps you in control of your emotions instead of being controlled by them.
3. See your target or goal.  Feel your rhythm and balance, both emotionally and physically.  Trust your senses, and swing.
4. Respect tradition, but seek truth.  Sometimes tradition should be challenged by creative wisdom.
5. Prepare with a mental checklist by observing and strategizing to perform in any situation, including emergencies.  Confidence comes with being completely prepared.
6. Without accountability, people don’t change.  Keep score of your “concentration” by counting the number of times you use your mental checklist
7. Bury the lies that you have believed so far in your journey.  Believe what God says about you.  The way you live will determine what your epitaph will say.  It is your choice.  Count the lies or count your blessings. 

Johnny challenged Luke with something new: face-on putting.  It was different, but it made sense.  But no one was doing it yet.  It was truth versus tradition.  Johnny said, “Someone is going to lead the revolution.  It just might be you.”

Johnny also said, “I believe greatness is revealed in the unorthodoxy of life.  It is in thinking out of the box labeled ‘comfort zone’ that we discover truth.  Our box is nothing but a self-imposed prison, a trap set for unsuspecting souls. My passion in life is to set people free from their boxes.”

In the last chapters of the book, Luke wonders why there aren’t more people like his coach to teach wisdom.  The story comes full circle when the student Luke becomes a teacher and shares what he learned with someone else. 

So that’s the reason for this blog title.  By definition “unorthodox” means “not conforming to rules, traditions, or modes of conduct.”  “Revolutionary” refers to a “sudden, complete, or marked change; something radically new or innovative; outside or beyond established procedure, principles, etc.”

I am a Christian.  The rules I don’t conform to are those of today’s world or culture.  The new and innovative thinking I would like to share with you comes from God’s Word.  I write this blog to share wisdom.  But you should know that it doesn’t come from me.  Everything I have comes from God. 

And oh yeah, calling myself a revolutionary is way out of my comfort zone.

P.S.: This author has no affiliation with David L. Cook or Utopia Films LLC