“The Freedom of Someone Else In Charge”
brian rushing
In school, we were occasionally required to do group projects. Group projects were the worst.
At first it would seem that group projects would be great – more people sharing the burden to get the work done. But that was rarely the reality.
I love the t-shirt quote I recently encountered:
“When I die I want my group project members to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time.”
The reason group projects didn’t work well very often is that no one knew who was in charge and no one wanted to volunteer to be in charge. But as soon as someone did step into that “group leader” role, they became the responsible one to get the work done. It then seemed that everyone else then decided to become lazy or incompetent!
What we learn from such exercises is that: Being in charge requires responsibility.
When you have agreed to provide the leadership for an event or a project, the burden of responsibility can get heavy. That is why most of us would prefer to not be the group leader. If someone else gets assigned that role or voluntarily chooses it, then we feel much more relaxed and we often wash our hands of the consequences. We take the attitude of: “Well, he is in charge, so if it doesn’t go well… if it isn’t successful… the blame falls on him.”
And while most of us never wanted to take on that group leader role, Jesus is different. He says to us: “Give me your life. I want to be in charge of it.”
I like the idea that if I give Him that responsibility, I can wash my hands of the consequences. Others in the Bible found that same freedom. Take Daniel and his three friends as an example:
Those who know God show great boldness for God.
Daniel and his friends were men who stuck their necks out. This was not foolhardiness. They knew what they were doing. They had counted the cost. They had measured the risk. They were well aware what the outcome of their actions would be unless God miraculously intervened, as in fact He did.
But these things did not move them. Once they were convinced that their stand was right, and that loyalty to their God required them to take it, then, in Oswald Chambers’s phrase, they “smilingly washed their hands of the consequences.”
“We must obey God rather than men!” said the apostles.
“I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course with joy,” said Paul.
I’m striving to do a better job of letting Jesus take the lead, so I can smilingly wash my hands of the consequences! I like the freedom of letting Him be in charge.
(Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)