God's benefit plan

Sometimes in life we find out the hard way that God really was right after all.

When I was about 12 my dad tried to give me some good advice. It was regarding my friends. He told me that the crowd I was hanging out with really wasn't the best idea. I scoffed at the suggestion and kept hanging out with my friends. They were cool, they were the bad boys in town. We were having fun disregarding some of the rules and some of the laws of our town. Who needed to be out of the streets at curfew anyway right?

When I found myself in police custody I decided my Dad had been right after all. I wasn't trying to be my own person, I just wanted to be accepted and so when the big dog of our little gang mentioned that he needed some smokes I decided to get him some. How does s 12 year old kid get smokes? You steal them. That's really the only way, stores won't sell them too you. So I tried, I must have looked like guiltiest kid on the planet though cause the checker spotted me right away as I tried to be smooth and snag a pack through the check out next too her. When the police got there, I got a ride "down town."

I was talking with a student just the other day who said she didn't like the word required when it came to keeping the commandments of God. She would rather think of keeping them as beneficial. It reminded me of what Paul had to say about everything being permissible, but not everything is beneficial. Many times we find this out the hard way.

In Gen 11 and 12 we have two examples of this. God told the people to be fruitful and multiply to spread out on the earth. They decided they wanted to stick together and build a city with a massive tower reaching to the heavens. God saw what they were doing and he confused their languages so that they had to disperse because they couldn't understand each other anymore. Permissible maybe but not beneficial.

Abram gets called on by God to head out to a land that God will show him. On this journey he ends up in Egypt where he decides to lie about his wife Sarai and say she is his sister so that he won't get killed because of her great beauty. So pharaoh takes Abrams "sister" into his household - to be his wife. Abram is getting all kinds of good stuff, livestock and such, but then pharaoh and his house hold get sick. Pharaoh finds out that Sarai is Abram's wife and sends them both packing. It seemed like a good idea (not really) it was permissible after all Sarai was kinda his sister. But not beneficial at all.

It turns out that listening to what our fathers have to say, especially our father in heaven, can really be the best plan after all.

I was lucky that I got caught that day. I didn't continue my life of crime and I didn't spend so much time with those friends anymore either. We still saw each other from time to time. But I didn't think they were so cool anymore. I learned that my Dad was actually worth listening to.

When it comes to the commands of God, I think we might just find out that they are more beneficial then we might think.