What You Want
I wait for some seed to be planted in my brain before writing these. Today, I’m being drawn to this last weekend.
Long ago, I took a personality test in a management class called “True Colors.” Like all personality tests, you answer questions and are placed into one of their personality groups. This test had 4: Gold for rule followers; Green for those that want to figure out the process; Blue for emphatic/consensus people; and Orange for the impulsive “just do it” crowd. I was close to evenly split between gold and green with little blue and even less orange. My wife’s predominant color is blue.
Some time back, we watched our 3 grand-nephews. My wife had taken the youngest two to the Farmers Market with her. he called on her way home and asked what we were doing about lunch. I said that I didn’t have plans. She was about ready to ask the two little ones how they felt about grabbing corn dogs, and I said “Wait! if you ask them, inevitably, one won’t be happy with your suggestion and you’ll end up running to multiple places to try to make everyone happy (the blue influence on her part and the green thinking on mine).” I think she may have asked them anyway and sure enough the youngest one did not like corn dogs but did like hot dogs so the suggestion was made to take off the outside and eat it.
You see, 40 years ago or so, I had to take a Methods of Secondary Education class in college to get a teaching certificate. I have forgotten a lot of things from that class but the one thing that I remember (and helped me as a parent) was the suggestion to never ask a student a question that you weren’t willing to hear the answer. In other words, never ask Johnny if he’d like to erase the blackboard unless you were willing to hear a “no” answer. It’s far better to tell Johnny that you want him to erase the blackboard, please. It seems like a subtle difference but it is key. People are evaluating you over and over again and the more consistent you are the better they like it because they know what to expect.
This is where I think we have failed as a society because we want to take many aspects into account even though it leads to one outcome for one person and a different outcome for a different person (can you see how a person that is internally driven by following the rules might go crazy with this process?).
Oops, got off track. The ending to the lunch story was that my wife brought home corn dogs which, with the breading removed for 2 of the 3 boys, was fine. The bigger issue was that the two boys with my wife came home with a soda and didn’t bring home a soda for the boy that stayed home with me. Ironically, we have soda in the house.
This is the point of the story; people have a natural sinful flesh nature (as described by RC Sproul from our Sunday Bible Study), that is always focused on what is in it for me and my pleasure and we need God to awaken our holy moral part to be saved. By the way, the boys really are good boys and they can say and do things that will melt your heart but I still see the natural tendencies this way.
“Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me— not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.” - John 6:35, 44-48 ESV
The capstone to the weekend was the elder message where Don encouraged us to leave our obstacles (Sorry Don, I don’t remember your exact words) that hold us back from fully worshipping Jesus. We need to expand and embrace a fuller relationship with God.
“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” - 2 Peter 1:5-8
