IT'S A WONDER

I always love when people sit down an analyze some success to make it sound like it was planned. There is never one of those a moment of honesty where they say, "Whew, I sure lucked out on that one."

Conversely, with disasters it seems to work equally as well to find somebody else to blame rather than yourself. That way you don't have to admit to some flaw in one's character.

When we are talking about the things of this world, people inventing tales to justify or explain the result of something is not that surprising. But do we really need to do with it with the things of God?

You would certainly presume so from the way some ministries behave. They sit down and plot out church growth and all aspects of church life, maybe pausing to pray first, but other wise they figure out their next move by their own strength.

And if something works out they indirectly give God the credit, but talking about all the things they did to make it happen for the Lord. If on the other hand things fail, well it wasn't because of them, but the hardness of people's heart.

Are you beginning to appreciate the pattern in this thinking? It really is absurd at times in my opinion. Sort of like when people claim they have a word from the Lord. They sit down so convinced they know the Lord's will.

Only if they end up wrong, you can be guaranteed they will not be as vocal about their blunder as they were about being confident. That second part they will be just as happy if you don't even remember.

Pride just gets in the way of our honesty. Personally, I think God lets us blow it at times to humble us so we don't assume we have him totally figured out. There are other times I think he just let's us fall prey to the realities of chance so we won't get too puff up with arrogance that we somehow can control everything in life.

Along the way, we face the times when being human, we just blow it, plain and simple. It doesn't matter how spiritual we think we are, how smart we presume we are or anything else, we make mistakes.

And if we accept that is natural and normal then we just thank the Lord for his mercy and move on. Perhaps a little more humbled and wise in our thinking.

For me, part of spiritual maturity that brings peace is accepting it is okay to be imperfect. I have learned this lesson the hard way at times, but I know that my relationship with the Lord has become so much more intimidate and joyous since I finally stopped kidding myself about my shortcomings And along the way found the path of faith so much more rewarding since I stopped kidding myself about my being imperfect and in need of grace instead of never making mistakes.