Your way might not be best for others

Your way might not be best for others
                        

“For we are his workmanship, created in Jesus Christ for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10).

We all have routines that enable us to be more productive and help us to move from one task to another with ease. For example, I am home alone writing with just a fan running. No one is here to talk in the background or watching TV. I work my best when it is quiet. I never try to go to a coffee shop to write because I get easily distracted. About the time I’d start working, I would have people come up and talk to me, or I would listen to the music more than I would be working.

I know what works for me, and I would be the first one to admit what works for me might not work for others. I see people get bent out of shape because someone tells them the way they do things wouldn’t work for them. People can take it as a slap in the face when other people say the method they hold so near and dear isn’t so for someone else. They can take it as a personal insult, that because their way was rejected, they may feel rejected too.

Of course, that is nothing but hogwash because someone may be my friend but can’t do something the way I do and I can’t do something their way. God in his great wisdom made everyone special in their own way; no one is a robot. We were all made with different emotions, likes and dislikes, so trying to make everybody fit into the same box is to deny the way God made that person.

A theologian once used the phrase “deny God of his godliness.” I can’t remember in what context he used the phrase, but it works well here. Because when we demand someone do something our way, we are denying them the right to be who God made them to be.

Jeremiah 18:3-4 said, “Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something at the wheel. And the vessel that he made was marred in the hand of the potter; so he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make.”

In that passage God was talking about Israel, but I think the same can be said for us on an individual level. We are each special in our own way. I am glad I am not you, and believe me, be glad you are not me.

It is fine to teach people our way of doing something, but then we can’t get offended when people find another way of doing it. We should be fine with that. Thinking we have the best way of doing things is fine, but it is the best way for us. Maybe other people can help us out by showing us a better way.

The temptation is to think we know it all and it must be our way, but if we just humble ourselves and be willing to learn, we may learn an easier way of doing something.


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