Figuring out the Rules of the Game

Suggested Reading: Luke 2:41-52

Last night, we had our grown children over for a family dinner and, afterwards, we played a new card game. My wife and I had played it before, but no one else had. There were several moments throughout the game where mistakes were made because we were all still figuring out the rules. As the game went on, we got better at playing, but through the first several rounds, there were some moments of embarrassment because one of us discarded the wrong card or thought we had the round won, only to discover we had forgotten something important. Overall, though, it was a lot of fun, especially once we got the game figured out.

Having to figure things out is a part of growing up, and even Jesus had to do it, which is not something we typically think about. As a twelve-year-old boy, Jesus and his parents went up to Jerusalem for the Passover. When they were done, Jesus' parents headed home as part of a larger caravan. Jesus, somewhere along the way, had decided to head back to the temple without telling his parents. Mary and Joseph had reasonably assumed that Jesus would be where he was supposed to be, so it wasn't until much later that they discovered Jesus wasn't with them. They headed back to Jerusalem, where they searched frantically for Jesus, finally finding him on the third day in the temple where "all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers" (Luke 2:47, ESV). When his mother confronted him about not being where he was supposed to be, Jesus responded, "Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?"

As a twelve-year-old boy, Jesus understood his identity as the Father's Son. He understood the scriptures so well that the teachers and those listening were amazed by his understanding and his answers. But apparently, he didn't yet understand that he should tell his parents when he wanted to run off to the temple on the day they were returning home to Nazareth. Jesus worried his parents to death. He ran off without telling them and wasn't where he should have been. Not because he was being rebellious or sinful, but simply because he was a twelve-year-old boy and there were some things he was still figuring out.

There are a lot of things in life that we don't get right because we are limited, ignorant human beings who are still figuring things out. And, sometimes, we are really hard on ourselves because we haven't gotten everything right. But Jesus, the Son of God, who understood that he was the Son of God and understood the scriptures far better than we can ever hope to, worried his parents to death, not because he was sinning but because he still had things to figure out. If Jesus, even as a twelve-year-old, still had things to figure out, we still have things we need to figure out, and failing from time to time doesn't necessaarily mean we are sinning. It might just mean we haven't figured everything out yet. 

Where are some areas that you have failed recently? Are you coming down hard on yourself believing that you must have sinned somewhere along the way? Maybe you did. But, maybe, there are just some things you still haven't figured out yet. Pray through the situation. Ask God to reveal to you what's been happening. Maybe there was something sinful that needs to be corrected. Or maybe there are just a few lessons about life that you still need to learn and it's time to be intentional about learning them.

Looking for Blame in All the Wrong Places

Suggested Reading: Proverbs 19:1-8

When my son was very young, he had a problem with assigning blame to the wrong people. For instance, he would trip because he wasn't paying attention and then say that he had been pushed by whomever was behind him.  Or he would trip into you and hit his nose on your leg because he couldn't stop fast enough and then say that you kicked him.  When something happened that hurt or was unpleasant he couldn't bring himself to understand that he had any responsibility for it. He always assumed it was someone else's fault.  It nearly drove me crazy, but he did grow out of it. Now I can trust that when he says, "Somebody pushed me," that someone probably did push him.

Unfortunately, when it comes to God, many of us never grow out of that stage.  Proverbs 19:3 describes this phenomenon: "A man's own foolishness leads him astray, yet his heart rages against the Lord" (HCSB) . Quite often we get ourselves into messes that we then blame on God.  We mishandle our finances and then blame God for not providing for us better. We ignore our spouse and children and then blame God when our family falls apart.  We  make an unwise relationship decision and then blame God for not bringing the "right" person into our life.

We rationalize our blame of God by saying that God is all-powerful and should have prevented the bad decision or that, God is supposed to be loving and so God shouldn't let us go through heartbreak or difficulty.  When the truth of the matter is, God is honoring our own decisions and letting the consequences of those decisions play out. But we would rather blame someone else than look at ourselves and admit where we've messed up, so we presume to arrogantly blame God for the messes we have created.

Fortunately, when we find ourselves facing the consequences for our actions, God does offer us hope. In 2 Chronicles 7:14 God warns the Israelites that when they suffer the consequences for their own bad decisions that "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land" (NIV).  God offers forgiveness and help in the wake of bad decisions and sinful choices, but we must be willing to "turn from our wicked ways" which is impossible if we can't own up to them. Oh, we may silently admit that we did something wrong and secretly commit to do better, but such commitments never last. Lasting change normally doesn't come until we are able to own up to what we have done rather than feel the need to hide it.

God wants to help us deal with the consequences of foolish decisions, but nothing can change while we are blaming God for our own mistakes. Let's own up to our mistakes and not waste time blaming God.

Stopping the Choir for One Wrong Note

Suggested Reading: Psalm 101

In college I had the chance to study under one of the most respected choir directors in the state. Quite often, he would drive those of us in the choir crazy because of his common practice of stopping the choir the moment he heard a mistake. Sometimes, we wouldn’t sing two notes before he would stop us and start us again. You see, as far as our director was concerned, we were striving for perfection. We never really achieved perfection as a choir and I don’t think our director was under any illusions that we could ever be perfect. But he believed that if he pushed us toward perfection and we strove for it ourselves, we might get very close.

I have always enjoyed reading the Psalms, especially those attributed to David. But the other day something occurred to me that had never occurred to me before. I was reading Psalm 101, a psalm of David, where the psalmist writes, No one who acts deceitfully will live in my palace; no one who tells lies will remain in my presence. Every morning I will destroy all the wicked of the land, eliminating all evildoers from the Lord’s city (Psalm 101:7-8, HCSB). Those verses sound great, but David didn’t seem to live up to them. His children raped and murdered each other but David never seemed to remove them from the palace.  He allowed Joab to stick around even though the military commander had killed his rivals in peace time and in cold blood. He himself plotted and schemed to kill Uriah to hide his own adultery with Bathsheba. David himself did not live up to the standard he set here. Shouldn’t that invalidate the whole thing?

No.

All of us fail and fall far short of perfection, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t continue to hold the standard of perfection in front of us as something to strive for. Sometimes, our weakness and failures serve as a reminder of how important it is to hold up a standard of perfection. The idea that we should stop striving for perfection because we have fallen short is like telling a baseball player to stop swinging the bat because he doesn’t hit every ball or a musician to stop playing because she plays a wrong note from time to time. We don’t strive for perfection because we can ever reach it on our own, but because striving for perfection points us in the right direction, even when we fail and act like hypocrites. We must maintain a realistic outlook that remembers we will sometimes fail but that keeps us pointed in the direction of perfection as we move forward.

Don’t give up the standard because you fall short of it. Allow it to point you in the right direction. 

We Can't Out-Stupid God

Suggested Reading: Psalm 139

Not long ago, I was talking with a friend who had been going through a lot of changes. He had been making some difficult decisions in order to get his life in order and I have been really proud of the direction his life is taking. But on this particular day, my friend was expressing regret about all of the time he had wasted, doing things the way he wanted instead of following God's directions. He was worried about the possibility that he had ruined the plans God had for him and that now it was too late for him. I told him, "I don't think that is the way it works. God is smart enough to know we are going to be stupid and how long we are going to be stupid and plan accordingly."

He appreciated the sentiment and seemed encouraged, but when the conversation was over I decided it would be nice to find something from scripture that either confirmed or denied what I had told him. There are, of course, numerous places where God's knowledge of our lives is expressed. In Psalm 139, the psalmist confesses, "You know what I am going to say even before I say it. You both precede and follow me….You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed" (Psalm 139:4-5 & 16, NLT). But that just reassures us about God's knowledge, not that God does anything with that knowledge to plan for our shortcomings.

So I started looking at the lives of people. The first person I thought of was Peter. Peter, of course, was the disciple who denied that he even knew Jesus while Jesus was on trial and about to be executed. Luke 22, records one telling of Peter's story. In verse 34, Jesus warns Peter that the brash disciple will deny him three times before the rooster crows. But in the verses before that, Jesus tells Peter, "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers" (Luke 22:31-32, NIV). Notice, Jesus knew that Peter was going to fail him, he knew precisely when it would happen, and he knew that Peter would eventually get himself straightened out and become a source of strength for the other disciples.

I found another example in the lives of the sons of Jacob, when Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery. If you remember, Joseph spent time as a slave and as a prisoner before a providential encounter with Pharaoh's cup-bearer gave Joseph the chance to interpret a dream and become Prime Minister of Egypt. As a result, Joseph was able to help Egypt survive during a time of famine and, ultimately, to provide for his family. In Genesis 50:20, Joseph described to his brothers what God had done when they were fearful of Joseph's revenge. Joseph stated, "As far as I am concerned, God turned into good what you meant for evil. He brought me to the high position I have today so that I could save the lives of many people" (NLT). Not only, was God able to plan around the sin and malicious spirits of Joseph's brothers, God actually used their sin and malicious intent as an avenue to save them!

If you are trying to get your life back on track, attempting to follow where God leads, but you are worried that you have already messed up too much and ruined God's plans for you, take a word of encouragement from my friend. God knows we are going to be stupid. God knows how long we are going to be stupid. And not only can God plan accordingly, God can even take our sinful pasts and turn them into something useful for good.

Don't be discouraged, thinking your past has disqualified your from receiving God's blessings. God has a way of planning around our stupidity.

Getting a Wife-Mandated Mistress

Suggested Reading: Genesis 16:1-16

One of my favorite authors, Stephen Lawhead, often puts a disclaimer at the beginning of his books when the subject matter required him to consult others to make his details realistic. In this disclaimer he thanks those who have helped him with his research and then adds a note that any place the details might not add up the way they should is entirely his own fault. He gives credit for the help he had received but takes credit for the mistakes up front, not that I ever have or would have noticed any mistakes.

At the opposite end of that spectrum are Sarai and Abram. As they grew older, with Abram in his 80s and Sarai in her 70s, they still had not had any children. So Sarai convinced Abram to have a child with her servant Hagar so that she could count the servant's child as her own. Abram might have refused but the practice was fairly common at the time among couples who couldn't have children so Abram went along with it. When Hagar got pregnant she began looking at Sarai with contempt, possibly believing she could now replace her mistress (one of the common problems with this plan). So Sarai approached Abram, scolding him, “This is all your fault! I put my servant into your arms, but now that she’s pregnant she treats me with contempt. The Lord will show who’s wrong—you or me!” (Genesis 16:5, NLT).  Sarai, emotional and insecure as she was, came storming in, blaming Abram that her own plan had worked. She had come up with an idea, persuaded Abram to go along with it, and then got bent out of  shape at the predictable consequences when it did work. Isn't that just like us, sometimes?

How often do we come up with a plan or take action without quite thinking it through all the way and then get angry when the natural consequences of that plan come to pass? Worse yet, how often are we unwilling or unable to accept the blame for our own actions and try to pin the blame on someone else? We forget to make an appointment but it's the repair shop's fault they can't get us in. We wait to leave until the last possible minute but it's traffic's fault that we are late. We tell a spouse to set out hamburger meat, but it's their fault they didn't know we meant chicken breasts. We talk about someone behind their back but it's their fault they're being overly sensitive.

One of the least endearing qualities in any human being is the inability to take credit for mistakes or for the consequences of our own choices. When we mess up, let's have the courage to own up to our mistakes because Sarai was right about one thing:  The Lord will show who's wrong.