And he said, “Who are You, Lord?” Acts 9:5

Have you ever heard of the phrase ‘tail wagging the dog?’ It is a term that mean the less important item or thing dominates the situation, when it should be the reverse.

Take Joey (not his real name) for example, eight years old and seemingly in charge of the whole classroom. This was a situation I was faced with recently. As I walked into class this was the conversation between Joey and another member of staff.

“Joey could you please come out from under the table so the lesson can begin?”

-“I hate YOU!”

What would you have done? Now there are so many ways this situation could have been dealt with bearing in mind that you have a captive audience of about 30 other children and Joey has a sharp pencil in his hand.

It reminded me of Saul’s journey on the Damascus road. Triumphant from his last Christian kill and moving onto the next mission, he must have felt invincible then… the rest we know, but if you don’t you can read it here in Acts 9. You may call him delusional but Saul really thought that he was in charge of the situation. God had to arrest his attention to make him realise that in fact He was in charge. This is how God helped me handle Joey.

“Ok class attention this way. I need someone to help me because I am new here and not sure what I am doing. I need someone I can trust. No I am not choosing anyone with their hand up! Ok since the only name I know is Joey, it has to be you. Please come here and after you have finished sharpening this pot of pencils tell me where the register goes. Thank you.”

I didn’t give him any eye contact but just pushed the pencil pot to the edge of the desk and prayed hard in my heart. Sure enough, out crawled Joey and began to sharpen the pencils and ‘help’ me the confused teacher.  It worked that time only because God was in control of the situation. It wasn’t down to me or anything clever that I did.

Sometimes we just have to recognise who God is and remember that he is moulding us, we’re not moulding him.

The 'song' selection today is very unusual. ‘Change’ by Jon Jorgensen.