Symptoms Are Not The Problem

Next the devil took him to the peak of a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.  “I will give it all to you,” he said, “if you will kneel down and worship me.”

“Get out of here, Satan,” Jesus told him. “For the Scriptures say,

‘You must worship the Lord your God
    and serve only him.’”  Matthew 4:8-10

I loved the Snickers commercials where a star exemplifies what the person is acting like.  And then they eat a Snickers bar, and become more like themselves.  The punchline is, “You’re not you when you’re hungry.”  I want to focus on that part about you not being you.  It’s easy to tell hunger is the cause of you not acting like yourself.  But what about something that is not so easy to quantify or tell.  I’m talking about the sin behind the sin.  Let’s take anger as an example.  The other day my wife and I had an argument about a problem we were struggling with.  She had moved past it, but I had not.  I was frustrated because of this failure to communicate.  But so as not to upset her further on the topic (false witness saying I was ok when I was not), I chose to let my frustration out on minor things.  Instead of doing things out of kindness, I would stop doing it just to spite her.  Sometimes I would lash out at her over the smallest of things.  She soon became hesitant to be around me for fear she would upset me.  So, because we did not work together, I let anger set in, which caused her to be afraid.  I understood how anger had created division, but I did not initially realize that was not the problem.  My inability to tell her how I felt about the issue.  Sometimes, we only see the symptom but not the problem.

When we fail to follow what God expects of us, we are setting ourselves up toward only seeing the symptoms.  I was watching one of my favorite sermons from a pastor named John Ortberg, who talked about the concept of a shadow mission.  A shadow mission is one that resembles a decent one but often leads to failure.  For example, I want my team to be the best, and there is nothing wrong with that.  But do I want it for the success and accolades of the organization or for me to be seen as the best leader?  It is a subtle but important difference.  One is about others, and the other is about self.  In the verses above, Jesus is being tempted by Satan.  Satan offers Him every kingdom in the world if He only bows to him.  Notice the trick here.  If Jesus makes it all about Himself, the world becomes His but He must serve Satan.  But if you serve Satan, do you really have the world?  The problem was not that Satan could not offer Jesus the world.  It was that Satan wanted to trick Jesus out of what was already destined to be His anyway.  We see stories like these throughout the Bible.  Indulge.  Eat the apple, Eve (Genesis 3).  Send Uriah to his death to be with Bathsheba, David (2 Samuel 11).  But those always lead to greater issues of sin.  However, Jesus does what is right saying, “You must worship the Lord your God and serve only Him.”  Jesus made it about God and not Himself.  It was one of His many selfless acts, and it is selflessness that often avoids our falling to our shadow mission.  Pastor Ortberg said, “Shadows can never satisfy the soul.”  The more it is about God, the greater the likelihood our lives are fulfilled.  The more it is about us, the greater the opportunity for failure.

Learning to identify the real sin can be tricky.  We tend to solve many issues by asking what we want.  As Jesus illustrates, the way to resolving sin is often not by looking for what we want.  Instead, it is to see what we can give.  Moses’s greatness was always that he never viewed himself as great (“Who am I to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt?”  Exodus 3:11b).  He instead trusted God, who empowered him after giving himself to God’s authority.  If we trust God instead of ourselves, we too can overcome our problems.  Let us rely on God to guide us instead of ourselves dealing with just the symptoms of a bigger issue.  How can you trust God with your problems?  What will you do to better understand the shadow mission behind your true calling?  My prayer is that we entrust God to help us see our problems and not just treat the symptoms.  Amen.

This Devotion was written and contributed to The Hope Fellowship by Kent Williams