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In Christ, Mark
In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
This is what the Lord says:
“Where is your mother’s certificate
of divorce with which I sent her away? Or to which of My creditors did I sell
you? Because of your sins, you were sold; because of your transgressions, your
mother was sent away.”
Isaiah
50:1
This ends today’s
reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
We like to play the blame game in
life. It’s true.
Maybe you have been guilty of it
yourself. I know I have.
When we play the blame game, we
look for other people or things to blame for our circumstances. In our minds, it’s
always someone else’s fault, anything or anyone except ourselves. You see, it’s
easier to put fault in others than it is to accept that we are the ones who are
wrong and we have gotten very good at it. In fact, the problem is almost
habitual.
Take sports, something I enjoy watching
a lot. How many basketball games am I going to have to watch where a player
obviously fouls an opponent and then acts like they did nothing wrong? Instead,
they blame the official for making the call. Here’s a newsflash. They’re doing
what they get paid to do. I long for the day when a player just accepts they
fouled and keeps their mouth shut. Ditto in football and hockey when it comes
to committing penalties. Accept the fact you broke the rules and receive the
consequences without pointing a finger at someone else.
How about driving, something most
of us do regularly? How many times do we break the traffic laws when we’re out
on the highways? Sometimes we go too fast or fail to stop or yield when we’re
supposed to. We’re always in such a big hurry that when a police officer pulls
us over for a violation, we tend to automatically blame law enforcement. We get
in this mindset that thinks “Why did they pull ME over? I was just going with
the flow of traffic.” It doesn’t matter that everyone was speeding. They can’t
stop everyone. The bottom line is that the person breaking the law was the one
at fault. The police officer was only doing what they get paid to do, enforce
the laws that were broken. Perhaps, we should just be obedient to the rules and
avoid the risk or if we don’t want to do that, accept the penalties that come
from our choice to break the law.
Then there is this one. A person
who makes mistakes in life turns around and blames their parents for their poor
decision making. They didn’t teach me this or teach me that and so now I am in
trouble because of them. Don’t tell me this doesn’t happen and maybe a person
won’t really get the big picture of things until they become a parent
themselves but Dad and Mom do the best they can most of the time to show us the
right way to live. More often than not, we decide to not adopt the things they
taught us once we reach adulthood and can do whatever we want without parental
oversight. We’re free to do what we want but guess what, there are negative
consequences for our negative choices in life and most of the time those
consequences were far worse than any penalties our parents imposed in us when
we failed to obey them growing up. If only we would choose to be accountable
for the things that we do and leave our parents out of it. After all, doesn’t
God command us to honor them in the way we live (Exodus 20:12)?
Finally, I have to bring this up
because it’s when we have hit absolute rock bottom when playing the blame game.
You see, some people have even gone as far as blame God for their situation as
if He is possible of doing wrong. It’s unbelievable to me but I guess people
will go to any length rather than blame themselves. This is the case with the Israelite
people as we begin to look at Isaiah, Chapter 50 today. God has placed His
judgment on the people of Judah and Jerusalem because they chose to worship
false gods and idols. God had warned them to stop over and over and over but
the people still persisted and so God sent them into a seventy year exile at
the hands of the Babylonians, punishment for their continued disrespect and
disregard of Him. Well, as we can see from the words of the Lord here, it seems
that the people of Israel chose to blame God for their circumstances. Look at
these words again now:
This is what the Lord says:
“Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce with which I sent her
away? Or to which of My creditors did I sell you? Because of your sins, you
were sold; because of your transgressions, your mother was sent away.” Isaiah 50:1
The Lord wastes no time cutting to
the chase with the people of Israel who have obviously placed fault on Him for
their exiled situation in Babylon. God would have none of it and sets His
people straight, turning the matter back onto them and their sinfulness, the
real reason why they were in their situation. It was because of their sins that
they were given up to the Babylonians. There was no other catalyst for God’s
penalty.
In other words, it was their fault.
Friends, most of the difficult
situations we end up in can be traced right back to our poor choices in life,
more often or not when we decided that our will counted more than the will of
the One who made us and reigns over us. We seem to think we know better than
God Himself when it comes to what we should do and so we end up finding
ourselves in the midst of hardships and trials of our own making or, as we see
in the case of the Israelites, God’s making as discipline for our deciding to
sin over accepting His righteousness.
In the end translation, the difficulties
we sometimes find ourselves in are usually our own fault. We would be well
served to just confess our wrongs when we commit them, repent of those wrongs,
and then seek the Lord’s help in becoming more like the people He wants us to
be, even if it means we need to do so in the midst of our consequences.
Amen.
In
Christ,
Mark
PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com
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