Jesus is always the answer

Once upon a time, I worked as a school counselor at a private, Christian school. I also taught a Bible class each year. There were always kids in my Bible class who would get bored and mentally sleep during the lesson. It wasn't that my lesson was boring (although maybe it was). Rather, these bored kids were usually the ones who attended a Christian school against their will. These kids had parents who went to church and had been dragging their kids along for years. But, these kids didn't buy into their need for faith or learning more about God. They had prayed a prayer in VBS or children's church and they believed that was the end of it. 

Often during lessons, while these bored kids mentally napped, I would sometimes call on them to wake them up and get them engaged with the rest of the class. Sometimes I would ask them a question about what I had just said. I noticed that the answer I most often got from the bored kids was "Jesus"....even if we had been talking about a completely different topic. One student gave a follow up that has stuck with me ever since. He said "Mrs. Miller, 'Jesus' is always the answer."

He was trying to get out of trouble, but he had stumbled across some great theology in the process.

This morning I was thinking about a couple of situations that have popped up with people in my circle of influence. In both situations, the person involved is struggling with a big problem….but it is a problem that keeps circling around them like a vulture. These two, totally-unrelated people keep encountering the same struggle because they keep doing the same behaviors over and over. The same behavior keeps leading to the same outcome for them.

I’m a very logical person. If I try something and it doesn’t work, I analyze what didn’t work and I might try again with a new and improved approach. Or if I see that the choice was total crap in the first place, I don’t try it again.

Do you keep failing in relationships? What are you doing that isn’t working? Are you choosing the same kind of people each time? Are these people unhealthy? Are you? Have some negative characteristic that makes them (or you) difficult to live with? When you dream about what you want in your future relationship, are you picking people who fit that dream? Or are you picking people who are emotionally unavailable, addicted, abusive, lazy, or just plain-old jerks? I see so many people sabotaging their own happiness by selecting relationships with the wrong people; and when that relationship fails, they hit the repeat button and do it all over again with another wrong person.

Or maybe you keep failing over and over in your career? I once knew a woman who had been fired at least five times from different jobs. Each time she would complain about this boss or that co-worker who was “impossible” to deal with or had “unrealistic” expectations of her. Unfortunately, she was the common denominator in all her own failures. She was the one who was impossible to deal with. She was the one who had unrealistic expectations of what would be expected of her at her job. Is that you? Do you keep making the same mistake in choosing jobs that don’t fit? Or making the same mistakes in how you treat your boss or co-workers? Guess what? The same thing will keep happening if you don’t make adjustments or corrections.

Perhaps your failure keeps happening with your unhealthy choices. Are you trapped in behavior that is harmful, like drinking too much? What keeps you in that choice? Is it the friends you hang out with? Do they like hanging out with getting drunk as the main activity you do together? If you want to make a new choice – a choice to stay sober – then you might need some new friends who aren’t keeping you trapped in the old behavior. Same goes for drugs, eating too much, spending too much, or any other unhealthy behavior.

Most of these things involve making different choices. But those choices get a lot easier when we are walking with Jesus. When we are focused on growing in the fruits of the Spirit, reducing our negative behaviors gets a lot easier. We don’t need to jump from unhealthy relationship to unhealthy relationship when we are satisfied in our relationship with Jesus and have a Godly relationship as our standard. We treat our relationships with genuine love, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness and all the rest. When we display the fruits of the Spirit, we are better employees and co-workers because we are patient, kind, and have self-control. The fruits of the Spirit – growing to be more like Jesus – also help with unhealthy choices. When we see ourselves like Jesus does, we want to live up to that image. Jesus didn’t make us to be trapped in a prison of addiction – he made us to truly live in freedom! Jesus really is the answer to all questions!