God’s Way or My Own Way
We all want life to work our way.
In fact, the Bible tells us that we’ve all gone our own way.
“All we like sheep have gone astray, we’ve turned every one unto his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” Isaiah 53:6
Children will lay on the floor and kick and scream, rebelling against a parents wishes because they want their own way and are willing to fight for it.
Teens, a little wiser than the toddler, will manipulate behind the scenes, circumventing parental authority and making life work their way.
And when we sin, we’re choosing a path that God denounces because we ultimately believe it will make life work for us and will bring us ultimate happiness.
Whenever we sin, we’ve stepped away from God-dependence (i.e. obedience to His word) and have chosen another road—our own road, our own way. We live life like practical atheists, giving a nod to God on Sundays but forgetting Him Monday through Friday. (How foolish! If God were to withdraw his care from us we’d shrivel up and die. We’re held together by the word of his power and by him all things consist! How conceited we can be!)
We underestimate the underlying sin in our own lives and assume that the reason we’re having problems is because of some external pressure, problem or person.
One principle in scripture is that sin pervades/corrupts our whole flesh. And we aren’t just people who need slight reform, but sin renders us “moral quadriplegics” –to use a phrase Peter uses with our youth group. We don’t need reformation or a slight re-adjustment. Scripture says that we need rescue and redemption. And Christ did just that for us on the cross.
The sin inside us is what makes us choose “our own way,” but we always forget about out own sin. (Scripture says sin is deceitful, so naturally, we forget about it.) It’s easier to point the finger, blame circumstance or other people or blame God with neglect.
And over and over again in the Old Testament, God reminds Israel is that their sins are rooted in the fact that they have forgotten and forsaken Him! I just finished a study on the book of Hosea, and two messages are clear from the book: God is a jealous God when it comes to His people, and He will tolerate no rivals.
Several truths from scripture that I’m meditating on this week:
- God made us to be dependent on Him
- We cannot live joyful, God-honoring lives independently from Him.
- God will humble us in order to make us turn back to Him.
Jim Berg author of Changed Into His Image talks about humility as the hallmark of the “dependent creature.”
I used to tell my children this quote from his book: “If you needed somebody to make you, you need somebody to maintain you!” and “There’s just two choices on the shelf: pleasing God or pleasing self.”
He talks about sin in our lives that distorts our focus making like all about me, when really life is all about God and loving Him.
Berg talks about several ways that God will humble man’s pride and expose his self-dependence:
- sending us problems we can’t handle to expose our helplessness (Naaman)
- giving us a command we won’t obey to expose our self-centeredness (Jonah)
- arrange an outcome we can’t control to expose our sinfulness (David and Bathsheeba)
- show us a God we can’t comprehend to show us our finiteness (Job)
And as Andrew Murray so beautifully put it in his excellent work Humility:
“Humility, the place of entire dependence on God, is from the very nature of things, the first duty and the highest virtue of man. It if the root of every virtue….Humility is simply acknowledging the truth of his position as man and yielding to God His place.”
So today, instead of resisting the will of your Creator, why not submit to his authority and right to rule you today? And if this idea is hard, or if you are afraid that the outcome will be bad or that submission to God’s will automatically means you’ll find yourself on the first plane out of the country to become a missionary to some dark remote place where you’ll be forced to eat worms and bugs, don’t worry like that. God is good. He is not out to ruin your life. He loves you and wants the best for you.
Resources to help:
Changed Into His Image
What Do I Know About My God?
Humility
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You’ve brought forward one fo the great but awful truths, Sarah: In turning toward sin, we turn from God. This makes Jesus’ ministry that much more beautiful. When I consider that his cousin John’s last recorded sermon is “Repent for the kingdom of God is near”, and that Jesus’ first recorded sermon is “Repent for the Kingdom of God is near”, and that Jesus then ushered in that kingdom under the New Covenant when he died and rose agian, I am overwhelmed by how much God cares for us and wants us as his own.
Yes, it is overwhelming, the deep, deep love of Christ. Beyond comprehension.