I have watched life take its own course and drive me where it wants. I have had very little or no input to chart the way forward on my journey and all I have known is to be pointing fingers to accuse and blame my so-called betrayers; not realizing that when one finger is pointing to the one I am accusing, three fingers are pointing at me. Who am I?
I am the number one accused of my life. Instead of looking on the outside to blame I should start looking on the inside. Instead of blaming the storm for flying away my coat I should learn to take my coat from the washing line when the storm gathers.
I have been beaten by the tides of life from a hard rock into the propellers of a merchant ship and by the time I let go I was left dizzy with my stomach swelling and almost bursting as another tide carried me afloat towards the shore. Some kind and generous fisherman spotted me and took me aboard his boat. He clothed me and gave me water to drink. Yet I kept wondering “Why me?”
This is the voice of a victim. He is always playing the character of a victim. He has left the tide of life to carry him where it pleases. We don’t know, maybe the fishermen made him his assistant. Who do you think is next on the blame list? Of course the fisherman. Prophet Habakkuk kept complaining to God until God told him to write down his vision. Habakkuk 2:2. In other words God was saying to Habakkuk, you have left the tide of life carry you around it’s enough; take charge of your life. Write down what you want with your life and navigate your way through.
A man can only run one race at any given time. He or she might receive more than one trophy for the race but he cannot run the two races at the same time. Every race has a start and a finish line. For as long as the stop watch of my life is still running I am running my own race and I don’t have the choice to pause and continue. When I crossover my own lane to run another man’s race my stopwatch continues running while I am not moving from my present position because I have stopped working.
I have made countless attempts to start my own business and I have failed. I have sat down to think where I might have gone wrong and I realised that it was not the right business for my present location so I changed to another and it failed too. I probed into what led to the failures and I noticed one thing, I didn’t run the businesses and actually the first business didn’t fail because of location but because there was no one to run it. I realised that unless I rose up to run my business and led it to where I wanted, I would blame the small market or the gap between the rich and the poor.
Rise up and assume the responsibility of your life. You are more than a conqueror (Romans 8:37). You have the ability of a conqueror inside you; change your mindset from victim to victor. The difference between the first character and our last character in this passage is that the first character did not play any role in his life but he left fate take its course and started blaming everyone and everything for his misfortunes. While the second character took stock of himself whenever he failed. That is the first character looked outside to blame and he ended up a victim while the second character looked on the inside to evaluate and he ended up victorious.
Jesus is Lord.
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