Are you trying to pray yourself out of a situation you behaved your way into?
-Andy Stanley
Personal responsiblity is not a popular thought these days. We see ourselves more as the effect and less as the cause. We see ourselves as victims and yet at times we are really only victims of our own crime.
I’ve had many conversations with teenagers about how it’s better to study for a test than to wait for test day and pray that God will supernaturally put the answers into their brains. We are all guilty of this though. We make bad decisions, we say wrong things, we do wrong things, we sin…and then we wonder how we ended up here?
Recently I suggested to our teenagers at nxt.lvl that they not date. You’d think that I recommended that they don’t eat. The thought of going through middle school or high school without a “love life” seems foreign to them. How many times have we heard the story of the teenage girl who thought, “It was just a one time, we didn’t plan this…”
Mistakes are not just for the young. Sin is not a sickness for lesser aged among us only. Had that teenage girl and boy avoided the place where they were alone…the opportunity of sin could have been avoided too. So what situation have we found ourselves in lately that a better decision or a change in our behavior could have prevented?
