Day 224 - Knowing Better
📖Daily Reading
Luke 12
Join me on my morning walk as we rise and shine together by walking through the Bible daily and learn a practical applicable coaching nugget from the ultimate life coach - our creator (whatever that means to you). No judgement zone here, all are welcome, we are all on a spiritual journey because we are after all spiritual beings having a human experience.
📝 Reflection
Luke 12: 47 - 48
“ And a servant who knows what the master wants, but isn’t prepared and doesn’t carry out those instructions, will be severely punished. But someone who does not know, and then does something wrong, will be punished only lightly. When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.”
49-52
“I have come to set the world on fire, and I wish it were already burning! I have a terrible baptism of suffering ahead of me, and I am under a heavy burden until it is accomplished. Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I have come to divide people against each other! From now on families will be split apart, three in favor of me, and two against - or two in favor and three against.”
When you know better you should make every attempt to do better. Knowing better brings along with it responsibility. Jesus is not pulling any punches in chapter 12. He starts off with talking about hypocrisy and ends with talking about how he did not come to bring peace to earth. There is no neutral ground with Jesus. Only those who don’t know any better will get some leniency.
There really is no neutral ground within either. When one knows better and continues to not do better, then there is intentionality involved and a willing disregard. This hurts internally. This is an internal betrayal that will eat away at your soul and identity. This definitely does not bring peace, it brings division. We have a few choices in order to proceed, and these are typical options that most of us choose from:
1. we do the work to do better and move in that direction
2. we somehow learn to live with the hypocrisy and find ways to justify and rationalize this
3. we numb out and fall asleep to the knowing better, we deny or try to forget
4. we develop coping strategies that distract us from our knowing and awareness
5. We take out our internal frustration, anger and disappointment with ourselves on others - projection
Since humans are complex and interdependent and often codependent it is a mixture of these. The first choice is the better choice but it is also the hardest. We can somewhat identity with Jesus in his words of having a ‘heavy burden of suffering until it is accomplished’. Often when we know better we don’t ‘want’ to do better, we do but we don’t. If you know you know!
Letting go of habits, hangups and hurts may seem simple on the surface but not easy to accomplish. But a saying that has helped me is; ‘choose your hard’. While it might be hard to do better at first it is the much easier thing in the long run. Doing the easy thing and avoiding the hard is not really avoiding the hard, it is just delaying or choosing a different hard. This is self deception.
There is no avoiding hard things in this life on earth. You can choose the hard thing of not giving into cravings and desires in the moment that sometimes feel so strong they might take you out, or you can choose the hard thing of the consequences. Humans are often only concerned with the how they feel in the moment and are willing to ‘kick the can of consequences down the road’. But the piper needs to be paid eventually.
The longer you wait the harder it is and sometimes we wait too long…. V 45-46 “But what is the servant thinks, ‘My master won’t be back for a while, ‘and he begins beating the other servants, partying and getting drunk? The master will return unannounced and unexpected , and he will cut the servant in pieces and banish him with the unfaithful.’ Don’t cut and divide yourself in pieces and banish yourself from the life giving reward of living with integrity, even though it may seem hard, it is worth it!
✍🏼Daily Journal Prompt
Do you see yourself in the choices listed above? Which most resonates with you and why?
📖Tomorrows Reading
Luke 13
Coaching Opportunity
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