I Do Not Want To Be Right
My grandmother stood in her yard a little over a year ago. She shook a photo. One that I had seen many times. One of me and some distant cousin playing together when we were real young. I didn’t recall the actual event, but I had heard the story many, many times.
"Do you have a photo like this," she asked.
"Yes," I told her.
"Give it back. It’s mine," she barked.
"No," I protested, ‘it has been in my photo album for over twenty years."
"Just bring me back my picture," she insisted. She had convinced herself that I had stolen her picture. No matter how much I objected, she was convinced that she was right. She just had to be right.
I know that I can be like that too. I think it runs in the females in my family. I have been known to go online to ferret out information to prove that I was right, which has caused people to be leery about speaking their mind around me. I’m sorry to all those who have tangled with me in my effort to be right...you know who you are.
Over the years, I have learned that being right, going down with the "I’m right" ship, doesn’t win you points as a good friend...or with God.
When our hearts become so hard, so rigid, that we think we know it all or that we cannot learn new information, our relationship with God becomes stagnant. It is when we are in this state, this state of hardness, that God cannot teach us if we are not pliable, bendable, and above all, teachable.
I found this wonderful passage in the Bible. I knew about it from Juanita Bynum, who used to preach it. But it didn’t become real to me until now.
"And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. And I will put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations." - Ezekiel 36:26-27 (NLT).
I pray this passage because it is what is in my heart. I don’t want to be right. I want to be teachable. I want to learn all God wants to teach me. I want to obey what He tells me to do.
As long as we hold onto our need to be right, we will never learn at the feet of the Master...and soak in what He is eager to share with us.
We will be in the same situation we are now, stuck and unwilling to bend. Instead we must be willing to give God our stony heart in exchange for a tender, responsive one
- Annagail Lynes
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