READ: Psalm 149
When my children were little, countless times they said, “I can do it myself.” They were exerting their independence. They wanted to learn how to dress themselves, which often meant heads put through armholes or shirts on backwards or buttons in the wrong buttonholes. They were determined that they could fix things by themselves or get the lids off themselves, and if we tried to help they would say “I can do it myself”—until they made a mess, and then they would then cry out for help.
It made me think that God has given us a free will. Sometimes we make good choices, but sometimes we make a real mess of things. There are a lot of things we can do for ourselves, but there are still plenty of places where you and I need all the help that we can get. It is easy to think that we can do our life without God. When I get too self-sufficient, that is generally when I make a mess of things. The Psalmist wrote these words in Psalm 149:4, “He crowns the humble with victory.” Seems to me that we would have a lot more victories in our life if there were less of us and more of Jesus. The scripture doesn’t say that God crowns the self-sufficient with victory. It says He crowns the humble with victory.
When my children were little, countless times they said, “I can do it myself.” They were exerting their independence. They wanted to learn how to dress themselves, which often meant heads put through armholes or shirts on backwards or buttons in the wrong buttonholes. They were determined that they could fix things by themselves or get the lids off themselves, and if we tried to help they would say “I can do it myself”—until they made a mess, and then they would then cry out for help.
It made me think that God has given us a free will. Sometimes we make good choices, but sometimes we make a real mess of things. There are a lot of things we can do for ourselves, but there are still plenty of places where you and I need all the help that we can get. It is easy to think that we can do our life without God. When I get too self-sufficient, that is generally when I make a mess of things. The Psalmist wrote these words in Psalm 149:4, “He crowns the humble with victory.” Seems to me that we would have a lot more victories in our life if there were less of us and more of Jesus. The scripture doesn’t say that God crowns the self-sufficient with victory. It says He crowns the humble with victory.
– Dr. Tim Thompson