Who Me?
“When faced with a failed conversation, most of us are quick to blame
others. If others would only change, then we’d all live happily ever after.”
(Crucial Conversations, Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, Switzler, page #29).
Isn’t this the way we are? Don’t look at me! I didn’t do anything – the other person needs to change.
When I deliver a sermon that just doesn’t seem to get off the ground, there may be some temptation for me to say: People just weren’t listening. I don’t know what’s wrong with audiences these days – they don’t get it.
What I need to consider is the only way I can change anything or teach anybody is, to work at my end of the process!! I’ll never get better at this if I get into the habit of blaming audiences. That’s a wrong perspective, that works against personal improvement.
But we do this about a lot of things. This is typical in marriages; in churches and in the work place. It’s easy to think – If others would change, everything would be all right.
It’s often so simple to see what we are doing when we slow down and look at ourselves seriously. We are quick to direct blame outside ourselves. {We will never be equipped to help others defeat their deficiencies, while we hold to our own.}
Let’s give up that common excuse, and adopt a better perspective, By listening to Jesus.
“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the same measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck out of your eye,’ and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye,” (Matt. 7:1-5).
We need to
learn to use the mirror. Often that tells us where the problem is.
By Warren E. Berkley
The Front Page
From Expository Files 15.3; March 2008
