Our theme for this month: “Mistakes”
Our Bible verse for today: “Did you eat from the tree I commanded you not to eat from? Then the man replied, “The woman You gave to be with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate.” So the Lord God asked the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “It was the serpent. He deceived me and I ate.” Genesis 3:11-13 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “It is essential for us to take personal responsibility for our mistakes.”
This scene in Genesis chapter three would be comical if it wasn’t so sad and pathetic. Adam and Eve sinned. Period. They were told by God not to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but they did it anyway. It was nobody’s fault but their own. But when questioned about it by God, Adam claimed it was Eve’s fault because she gave him the fruit. He even suggested that God was complicit in the offense because He was the one who gave the woman to him to begin with. Never mind that Eve was a wonderful gift to him from a loving and gracious God. And never mind that Adam could easily have said “No thanks” when Eve offered the fruit to him. And never mind that Adam was the one who had actually received the command from God about not eating from that particular tree (at that point Eve hadn’t even been created yet). So Adam was the one with the greater responsibility for remaining obedient and for ensuring that Eve did too. But, he shucked and jived and did a little tap dance as he tried to shift the blame to Eve – and maybe even onto God Himself.
Then there was Eve. Her excuse was, “The devil made me do it.” But God wasn’t buying that either. Yes it was true that Satan, in the form of the serpent, did trick her into sinning – but he didn’t force her into sinning. Genesis 3:3 makes it clear that Eve knew full well that God said she was not to eat the fruit from that particular tree. Then in 3:6 we read that Eve allowed herself to gaze longingly at the very thing God had forbidden, and then she made a decision to give in and take it anyway. Nope, no excuse here either.
We live in a culture today where people commonly assume a victim mentality and they are unwilling to accept personal responsibility for their actions. There’s always an excuse and it’s always somebody else’s fault. That’s a loser’s mind set and it’s a guaranteed recipe for failure.
When we admit our mistakes and simply accept personal responsibility for them – no excuses, no rationalizing, and no whining – then we can learn from them and grow wiser and stronger. But when we refuse to simply accept responsibility for our actions and we begin rationalizing and attempting to shift the blame, we reinforce in our own minds the notion of being a helpless victim, and essentially surrender control of our fate to the actions of others.
Also, when we do that we may be fooling ourselves, but we’re not fooling anyone else who is close enough to the situation to know the truth. When it’s obvious that we have brought this situation on ourselves by our own bad choices, but we then do the “Adam shuffle” by tap dancing around the truth and attempting to shift the blame, we’re not fooling anybody. We just make ourselves look silly and weak. Other people know the truth, even if they don’t actually say it to you.
Both Adam and Eve responded to their mistakes by trying to shift the blame rather than taking responsibility for their own actions, and they suffered for it. We always do. It is essential to take personal responsibility for our mistakes.
God Bless,
Oak Hill Baptist Church 