Some nights, the bed that I share with Gayle just isn’t big enough for the two of us.  For whatever reason, one or the other of us can’t get comfortable.  When this happens, I usually move to the spare bed and all is well.  The other night, she got up and moved to the uncomfortable couch.  When I realized she was gone, I was upset.  ”Why didn’t she just poke me and tell me to move?  She knows I don’t mind and then we both could have been comfortable in beds, instead of her fighting with the couch for a few hours and waking unrested.”  So I got up, told her to get back in bed and I moved to the spare bed, causing bad feelings all around.   Later I found out that she had tried repeatedly to wake me because she couldn’t get comfortable and finally gave up.

So what is the point of recounting this little “marital squabble”?  Because it made me realize that by just assuming that you know what is best for other people and trying to orchestrate your ideas in their lives, you run the risk or just making things worse for everyone.  I think as Christians we do this with regularity.  We try to force others to conform to our ideas about what is best.

Matthew 7:1 extols us to “judge not, lest we be judged’. It is important that we know all the facts before we attempt to ‘fix’ someone else. I must admit my hackles are raised when ‘they’ try to tell me who I should and shouldn’t love and what we should and shouldn’t do.  I could comply with their beliefs, but I would be miserable, uncomfortable and downright angry. This is even true in Churches, we believe we know to whom the preacher is speaking; or we hope we do. We have predetermined someone’s motivation for their actions when in reality we have no idea.  From the large theology issues to the small ‘embrace or deny new technology in the service’ issues. We as a people love to finger point and tell others how “God would want it”!

1 Corinthians 2:11 tells us, ‘For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.”  As people and especially as Christians we must remain vigilant to know the difference between our wants and desires for others and truly God’s commands for their lives. It’s something we all need to recognize and work on.  No two people are the same; we all have our own personal ideas.  And the only way to live peacefully is to let others live with their ideas and not try to force our thoughts into their heads.