My Way? Your Way? The Highway?

 I will instruct you and teach you in the way that you should go;

I will guide you with My eye.

Psalm 32:8

If you are a teacher of any kind, you well know the fact that some people do not want to be taught.  It is as if the student silently says, Dear Teacher: sorry, but no matter what your educational background is, or how much experience you have to back up your teaching, your opinion is not wanted. 

I had just such an experience recently in one of the musical ensembles that I lead.  Someone kept playing the wrong note time after time after time.  There was ample self-analysis as to why the mistake had happened and what needed to be done to fix the problem, but when we played the passage again, the same thing happened – not once, or twice, but several times.

When I offered a quick fix that would take away the ability to utilize the wrong note, an adamant refusal to even consider the adjustment poured forth, eventually ending in an offer to resign if I insisted.  I wasn’t about to go down that path, so I busied myself putting music away, then slipped out to my next appointment. I didn't feel like arguing, and after nine years of teaching in this setting, I don’t feel like forcing anyone to do anything.

There have been so many times when I have had similar conversations with God, only with me on the defensive.  God’s Word is full of necessary information to guide our lives in the right paths, but we have our own way of doing things and are not always amenable to His guidance.  When I was in college, a good friend gave me the quotation below, written by C. S. Lewis.  It is a wonderful reminder to me that, although God knows the path far better than I do, He will never force His guidance on us.  We can choose to go our own way.

There are two kinds of people:

Those who say to God, “Thy will be done,”

And those to whom God says,

“All right, then – have it your way.”

~C. S. Lewis