Too Big for Your Britches
I remember hearing,
"You're getting a little too big for your britches, young lady, you'd better settle down."
I was being warned that my actions or words were indicative of an attitude of arrogance. Perhaps I was teetering over into the danger zone of thinking too highly of myself.
A natural result of getting "too big for your britches" is choosing to step beyond boundaries in your life.
Boundaries are the people and the powers that "hem us in."
They determine the limits of what is and is not our responsibility and what is and is not within our control. It's our nature to want to step beyond God-ordained boundaries in our lives.
In his book Normal Christianity Watchman Nee explains that when Adam chose to eat the fruit from the tree of good and evil, he expanded his experience on earth to reach beyond the boundaries his loving Father and Creator placed on his life. God created us to have a relationship with Him where we depended on Him for our very life. He created us to be receivers of the Life that was His to give.
In the Garden of Eden, God was the Giver; Adam and Eve were the receivers.
In that relationship, God intended to be the Provider and Sustainer of our lives. But when Adam was given the choice to...
- eat from the Tree of Life and depend on God for all that he needed to live his life abundantly--or...
- to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and instead depend on himself to choose what he needed to live his life abundantly,
Adam chose to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil.
Nee went on to explain that with the "knowledge of good and evil" came the development of a life that God never intended for us to have.
As I pondered his thoughts, I came up with this:
The "life" we were not designed to have was this
exaggerated sense of self.
With our knowledge of good and evil came a choosing for ourselves how we would live. And when we direct our own lives;
...when we own our own destinies;
...when we "take charge" and command our experience
we are deceived into thinking that we are directing our own lives when we're merely floundering about in a shadow world plagued by impending death.
Apart from God there is no life. There is only the pretend life that is limited to the years that we take up space on earth.
When we enter in to a relationship with God (through the acceptance of Jesus' death and resurrection) we choose to return to the LIFE GIVER.
We choose to deny ourselves the "freedom" to choose for ourselves the direction of our own lives.
We allow the Master Gardener to prune away the wild branch that grew in its' own direction (in the opposite direction of God).
We choose to step back inside the boundaries God placed on our lives.
We choose to depend completely on God to provide for and sustain our lives.
Consider your life today, are you getting a little too big for your britches? If this blog post resonates with you, you might enjoy my new book Taking Responsibility for the Choices We Make releasing in June, 2017.
