ITS ABOUT TO WHOM WE LISTEN

A friend sent me the following passed on email.

In the American South they have a proverb: “If you call a dog a bad name, he’ll live up to it.” It’s probably true that if you call a dog a good name, he’ll live up to that too.
I think this proverb can also be applied to people. It’s amazing that with people you often get what you expect.
During an experiment several years ago all the brown-eyed students in a class were asked to sit in the front and all the blue-eyed students were asked to sit in the back. The teacher told the brown-eyed ones, “Brown-eyed children are more intelligent than blue-eyed.” The teacher kept this up for a week and found that the brown-eyed students did better in their homework. They got better grades. They were better behaved in class. The blue-eyed kids began to decline.
The following week the teacher came to class and said, “I’ve made a terrible mistake. The research shows it was the blue-eyed kids that are better.” She moved them to the front of the class, telling them they were more intelligent, and soon their scores soared.
Thankfully such experiments are no longer allowed. But they remind us that love is willing to trust, to give people the benefit of the doubt.

I wrote her back this reply and thought it deserved a larger audience.

So its all about who we listen to.

First of all the events the writer tells about are questionable if they ever actually happened. Human nature being what it is we would like to believe such things. They seem to answer the question of human nature in very simple ways.

But even if it were true our tendency is to hear only those voices that say what we already believe about ourselves. We can have a myriad of people saying wonderful things about us but our ears can't hear them if we don't already believe what they are saying.

Ultimately this dilemna is solved when we trust in God. God knows who we actually are.

As long as we listen to others alone.... either good or bad reports... we will have an erroneous understanding of who we are. And we will be under their power.

When we listen to ourselves we will have a better understanding of the truth in one way since we do really know in most cases who we are but we will not know who we were created to be or how to become that.

When we listen to God, He knows the truth about us without the color of self hatred or pride that hinders us from seeing the truth about ourselves. He also knows what he destined us to be and the path for us to follow to get there.

I once had a position in the university as a teacher of computers. In the last class I taught that year there were two students who took it upon themselves to destroy me as a teacher. I am not sure why but it was obvious from the moment they sat in their chairs. They did in fact accomplish their goal. By the end of my teaching that class I was finished.

However, years later after the shame, sense of failure and regret subsided long enough for me to ask God what went wrong. When I finally let him speak he showed me the destruction of my chance to teach university computer classes was one of the most helpful things that happened in my teaching career.

First of all I would have certainly followed the path of teaching adults in the university setting. I know for sure now that nothing could have been further from the plan of God for my vocational life. I am so glad I did not pursue that path.

Second of all it helped me to understand the nature of teaching and to understand my limits.

God has made me a certain way. I am not talking about sin I am talking about the limitations he has placed in me in my very creation. I need not see those as bad. They are just what they are. I can work with them and seek to improve but they will always present a challenge to me. This is good. It limits me. It helps me understand that I can only do certain things and that is a part of his plan.

I also learned that instead of continually putting myself in situations that were not my strengths I needed to purposely seek out those situations that were my strengths.

To continually try to do things we were not made to do only ends in feelings of failure. I know my strengths and I know my weaknesses. I can work on my weaknesses for sure and God wants me to do so. But I need to spend most of my time living in my strengths. This is what he made me to do.

You tend to focus on your weaknesses. You need to see them as simply things you cannot do well. Accepting this helps you to know that God does not expect you to jump through hoops higher than you can -- even if you or others or do.

I will never run a four minute mile. I once wanted to see how fast I could run a mile and trained for it for months. The best time I ever ran was six minutes twenty seven seconds. That's it for me. I have never done better and will never do better.

For me to continue to think I should somehow be able to run a four minute mile would be futile, exhaust the energy God gave me to do other things and in the end serve to leave me felling my life had not reached the potential God intended. But those thoughts would all have been based on the lie that I should be able to run a four minute mile...... even though I always wanted to I can't. I was never meant for me to do.

I am happy that I have spent years running but I am just an average slow runner. There is far more to my running than how fast I can do it. For most people my running would be a joke. But I plod along like the turtle and feel God's pleasure that I can do what I can. I love running no matter how slow I am. I am happy with who God made me even if it is not as good as the next person.

I have found that I need to find God's perspective on who I am and follow the plan He has. That plan will primarily involve the strengths He put in me. I don't constantly look at what I am not and wish I were something else. I love who He made me to be and rejoice in those things He put in me, including my limitations.

Today I am so happy that I was not able to teach the adult computer class at Western because I would have missed so much. When I found my "place" based on my strengths in teaching I have enjoyed every moment of it.

Blessings,