Grow Up // Essential Life Skills, Part 1

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

One of the most difficult things about moving from being a child, to being an adult, is becoming responsible. Taking responsibility for your thoughts and your actions. That’s why a whole bunch of people simply, never grow up.

Let’s be honest. Some people never grow up. Now, there are different aspects to growing up: Moving from childhood through those difficult teenaged years, into adulthood. One of them is taking responsibility for your life. Of course, not everything that happens to us over the years, good or bad, is under our control. Often storms blow in that we didn’t see coming, and yet it’s surprising how many things in our lives are, in fact, under our control; how many things we can change or influence through the decisions we take.

A child look to his or her parents when something’s too big for them to handle. In fact, even for the day-to-day, children rely on their parents for somewhere to live; for the food on the table; for the clothes on their backs. They rely on mum and dad to run them here and there, to come and watch them play sport or to get that award at the annual school speech night ... That’s all as it should be, by the way, but the reason that teenaged years can be so difficult is that those are the in-between years when parents want to teach their children to take responsibility for themselves, and yet still live under their authority.

That’s confusing for the teenager and for the parents. It’s why there’s so much conflict often in those teenaged years. When we come through that process though, what we should be is responsible young adults. Sure; we have lots to learn, but we’re meant to be responsible for providing for ourselves and for taking control of the direction of our lives, as much as that’s possible, and for owning the consequences of our own actions.

Yet so often as adults, we want to abdicate those responsibilities. We want to blame other people or our circumstances or whatever for our predicament, and that frankly is no way to live. There was a time in Israel’s history where they knew, they just knew, that they’d gone astray. Ezra 10:1:

While Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping and throwing himself down before the house of God, a very great assembly of men, women and children he gathered to him out of Israel. The people also wept bitterly.

Now they had some incredibly difficult decisions to make, and what they came to was to take responsibility for their mistakes, and (listen to this; it’s really important) to take action to rectify those mistakes. Ezra 10:4:

Take action, for it is your duty, and we are with you. Be strong, and do it.

What is it in your life that you need to take responsibility for? What is it in your life that you need to grab a hold of and, as difficult as that may be, deal with? Because until you take responsibility, things just won’t be right, and yet one of the things that stops us from doing that is the blame game. Have you ever noticed how easy it is when something goes wrong to blame someone else? It’s often our first instinct - our first response when something in our lives goes awry. In fact, in this day and age, it’s almost a rarity to see someone taking responsibility for their own mistakes or shortcomings.

There’s a business bestseller called, “Good to Great” by a man called Jim Collins. He and his team undertook a huge research project to determine what factors set apart those companies with sustained stellar performance on the stock exchange from the also-rans; the run-of-the-mill; the everyday companies. On the question of leadership of the successful companies, he writes this:

The leaders of truly great companies look out the window to attribute success to factors other than themselves. When things go poorly, however, they look in the mirror and they blame themselves, taking full responsibility.

The comparison CEOs often did quite the opposite. They looked in the mirror to take credit for success, but out of the window to assign blame for disappointing results.

When things don’t go the way they should, what do you do? Do you blame someone else, or do you own the problem with all your heart, taking responsibility to the extent that some or all of it was as a result of your failings or limitations? Think of the last time something went wrong. Go on, be honest with yourself. What did you do? People blame their past; their parents; their upbringing; their spouse; those people out there ... In fact, some people (be honest) have become exemplars at living out the blame game, and the problem with that is that in your own eyes, your life is completely out of your control. It’s everyone else’s fault and never your own.

Who or what do you blame when things go wrong, and how different would that be if like the truly great leaders, you instead took ownership of the situation? Because (listen to me) when we take ownership, all of a sudden, God has something to work with. When we take ownership, God steps in, in such incredible power.

King David is arguably the greatest king that Israel ever had; the greatest leader, until Jesus came along a thousand or so years later. Here’s the conclusion that David comes to. Psalm 51:1-4:

Have mercy on me, o God, according to Your steadfast love; according to Your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against You, You alone, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You are justified in Your sentence and blameless when You pass judgment.

That’s why he was a great leader. That’s why God got right behind him, and I don’t know about you, but I want God working for me and not against me.

Like it or not, we have to live with the consequences of the choices that we make, so on that basis, I don’t know about you, but I’d like to make the best choices that I possibly can. Good choices, most times, yield good outcomes. Not always, of course. Sometimes other people don’t like it when we make good choices; I’m sure you’ve experienced that. Sometimes unpredictable things happen to rob us of the good consequences that should have resulted from our good choices; that’s just the way it goes sometimes, but most of the time, good choices lead to good consequences and bad choices lead to bad consequences.

And as much as we may wish that it weren’t true, sometimes we don’t have what it takes to make the good choice; to take the high road. Maybe it’s because of our own blind spots or because we’re tired, or we don’t have all the information, or our emotions lead us in the wrong direction. There are plenty of times in my life when I don’t have what it takes to make the best choice.

It intrigues me that even Jesus the Son of God, the Creator of the whole universe, found Himself in that place on more than one occasion because when He became a man, He laid aside His glory and His power, and became just like you and me.

So, He had a big decision to make. Out of all those who’d been following Him, who would He include in His inner circle – those who, ultimately, would go on to build this fledgling thing called the church, when His business on this earth was done? Big decisions with huge ramifications there, in choosing those twelve, remembering that one of them was destined to betray Him. So how did Jesus handle it? Luke 6:12-13:

Now during those days, He went out to the mountain to pray and He spent the night in prayer to God. And when day came, He called His disciples and chose twelve of them, whom He also named apostles.

He involved God. I mean, seriously, all night He called out to His father in heaven; sat and listened, and received the guidance He needed to make the right choices – God’s choices.

Think about it. God sits above all; He sees all; He knows all, and above all, He loves you more than words can say. You and I do have to live with the consequences of the choices we make, so why wouldn’t we involve God in them? I can’t tell you the number of times that the answers have come to me just in the next passage of the Bible that I was due to read, or just waiting quietly on God in the early morning. God loves you. He wants to be involved in your life, and He’s waiting right now to help you make the best choices.