Today’s Scripture Reading (May 10, 2016): Psalm 131
Pastor Wayne Cordeiro insists that “Good habits are hard to form and you will benefit from them for a lifetime. Bad habits are easy to form, but you will suffer from them for a lifetime.” We seem to develop a lot of bad habits. In the church, a lot of them seem to be found in the way that we communicate with each other. I recently released to several people the three communication mistakes that I feel that people make with me. The first is that tell me what they expect. I want to help people. But telling me that you don’t think that it is too much to expect me to help won’t get you anywhere. Make me aware of the need and remember to say thanks when the help arrives. But if you want my help, don’t tell me what it is that you expect. The second communication mistake comes in the form of a threat. I have never been good with threats (you can ask my parents.) Threaten me and I will simply shut down. Don’t give a speech that ends with the words “or else.” I am stubborn enough to wait and see if the “or else” is really true. The third communication mistake that people make with me is the ever present artificial guilt trip. Again, understand that I try not to guilt others into doing things. (I know sometimes people feel guilty, but my hope is always that it is not because I have heaped artificial guilt on them.) Genuine guilty feelings should bring us to a point of repentance. Artificial guilt is a big waste of energy. (And, trust me, if your cause is just I will feel the guilt without you trying to put it on me. And if your cause is not just, you will be unable to make me genuinely feel guilty.)
But we also need to understand that each of these communication styles represent bad habits. They are shortcuts that we have developed to try to obtain our goals. Rather than building a genuine relationship, or rather than developing integral, worthwhile friendships, we take the shortcut to get what we want. And all three shortcuts seem easy. They begin a process – a habit – inside us that is easy to form. But, unfortunately, all three result in people running the other way as soon as they see us. Once formed, we will suffer from these communication miscues for the rest of our life – because they are simply too easy to use over and over again, even when the inevitability happens and the communication mode no longer works for us.
As I thought about these bad habits I also realized that all of these also stem from a profound lack of trust in God. If we believe that God loves us and wants the best for us, then can’t we trust him to work through the genuine friendships that we have developed with him? Instead of trusting, we begin the bad habit of taking the shortcuts and at the same time undermine what God is trying to accomplish in our lives. But maybe even a worse result is that the bad communication habits begin to form a weird codependency inside of us. We need them and the comfort that they bring, even if that means that we trust God less.
The final verse of this short Psalm exhorts Israel to trust in God. And the inference that we are supposed to take from the Psalm is that they were not. David is not praising Israel for their trust in God. He is encouraging them to begin a trust habit. The problem is that trusting God would be a good habit – hard to form, but one that we will definitely benefit from for a lifetime. But too often, instead of forming the good habit, it is simply easier and maybe more rewarding to fall back on the bad ones. It is easier to expect, threaten and guilt rather than trust God. And so we continue to suffer.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm 133 & 134
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