New Morning Mercies #218

Today you will convince yourself that you’re smarter than God and will write your own rules—or will humbly submit to his wise call.

It’s often a subtle thing, going on almost unnoticed, but it has huge implications for the way we live. You and I step over God’s boundaries because there are moments in our lives when we are able to convince ourselves that we are smarter than God. We tell ourselves that what he says is wrong, isn’t so wrong after all. We convince ourselves that we can disobey God and it will all work out in the end. We tell ourselves that our way is better than God’s way. The big lie that fuels all this is that there is life, real life to be found on the other side of the boundaries that the all-knowing, all-wise God has set for us. It is the lie that was first told, embraced, and acted upon in that terrible moment in the garden of Eden. Human beings have fallen into believing that lie ever since.

The psalmist says: “I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life. . . . I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. . . . The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple” (Ps. 119:93, 99, 130). There it is—God’s precepts give life. Yet a husband will think that he can be critical and demanding of his wife and their marriage will be okay. Or you will think that you can spend more than you make and your finances will work out in the end. Or I will come to believe that I can permit myself to lust without doing damage to my heart. In a thousand ways, we tell ourselves that somehow, some way we are, or this moment is, an exception to God’s rules. It all exposes that we still have wandering hearts that are all too susceptible to the enemy’s lies. Our wandering hearts don’t always love what God says is good, right, true, lovely, and pure. Sometimes what God says is best doesn’t look best to us, and sometimes what God says is evil doesn’t appear evil to us. In those moments, we are a danger to ourselves because we have bought into what is completely impossible—that we know more and are wiser than God. It is the height of the delusion of sin. It is a dangerous and destructive moral irrationality. It leads us nowhere good. It never results in the life that we are seeking. Proverbs 16:25 captures this delusion with brief but powerful words: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.”

This “I’m-smarter-than-God” temptation stands as another argument for our daily need for grace. It is yet another place where we need to be delivered from ourselves. It reminds us again that none of us has outlived our need for the rescuing mercy of an ever-present and ever-willing Redeemer. Run to that mercy once again today.

For further study and encouragement: Proverbs 6:20–23