We all want to call the shots in life.
No doubt you’ve experienced the hyper two-year-old who deliberately puts one foot over the line, testing the boundaries set by her weary parents.
Then there’s the teenager who totally shuts you out of his secret online world … and has managed to find a way around the security measures you added to his cell phone.
And, of course, who can forget the head-strong CEO who thinks he is boss of EVERYTHING—not just the company where you work. (Okay, I confess—that was me early in my faith walk.)
Playing boss creeps into the life of every human being on planet earth. It is inevitable that all of us will, at some point, hear God’s soft and pained voice ask: “So, Who Made YOU the Boss?”
Striving to call the shots forces us to assume a “large and in charge” persona in our futile attempt to make life just the way WE think it should be. And it automatically lands us in a slipstream of angst.
That’s what happened to me and that’s when I could sense God’s piercing question: “So, Who Made YOU the Boss, Mark?”
That moment took me to this compelling thought: If we think we can do anything on our own, it won’t be long before we think we can do everything by ourselves.
This me-centered perspective is particularly evident today in the face of 21st Century relativism, where everything is okay so long as someone says it’s okay.
But we can’t have it both ways. If we are going to play boss and rule our own lives, we will not be in a position to yield to God. Jesus knows only one possibility for each of us: simple surrender and obedience to him. Not interpreting what he says, but doing what he tells us and trusting him.
Surrender to Christ, according to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is what we must do: “That is the only way to hear his words. He does not mean for us to discuss it as an ideal. He really means for us to get on with it.”
Doing our own thing ignores God’s wise principles of living. Playing boss leaves us vulnerable to collisions with sin and the disruption of our relationship with God. We then drift farther and farther away from knowing God and finding his peace.
I never want to forget that trusting God WORKS…and trusting me does NOT.
I ask God to remind me every day that I am not the boss of my life. To keep me on my knees, looking up to him for direction and discernment. To give me the power to vanquish SELFISHNESS.
WHAT ABOUT YOU?
Has God asked you lately: “Who Do You Think You Are?”
“Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18
