I was playing with my 4-year-old grandson. We had all his race cars out and were pretending to do stunt jumps over a ramp, which was actually an empty water bottle.
The jumps got more and more dramatic, and eventually my grandson — as 4-year-olds are prone to do — got a little carried away and started throwing his cars all over the room.
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At first I tried to calmly settle him down, but he was all cranked up now and ignored my low-key admonishments. After several tries I finally raised my voice and sternly told him that if he didn’t stop he was going to have to go to his room.
He looked at me with a puzzled expression. I guess I had just gone from being his playmate to being his authority figure. And he didn’t like it.
After a few seconds of thought he made the decision to challenge my authority.
Learning to listen
“I don’t have to listen to you. I have to listen to mommy and daddy,” he said.
Not in a mean, defiant way. His tone was more like he was just trying to explain something I didn’t understand.
I didn’t get angry. I smiled. He was just doing what we all do. We all resist ceding control of our lives to someone else.
That can be especially true when it comes to accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior. We have no problem with the “Savior” part — we all want to be saved — but surrendering our lives to Him as our “Lord” can be more difficult.
God’s best
Psalm 3 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”
God wants what’s best for us, just as I do for my little man.
My grandson was probing to test his boundaries, to see who really had control. Who are the real bosses? We do that with God. We stray from His Word to see if we can find happiness elsewhere. It doesn’t work.
And it didn’t work for my grandson. He wound up in his room.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Ken Lass is a retired Birmingham television news and sports anchor and an award-winning columnist for numerous publications and websites.
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