Tag Archive for: #DoTheRightThing

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those examples, and it teaches us about doing the right thing, even when we don’t want to.

Recently, my granddaughter did something that I had seen her brother do, and that I had seen both of my kids do when they were the same age – she picked up something that she knew she was not supposed to touch. The reason why I knew that she knew she was not supposed to pick it up was because she looked me square in the eyes as she picked it up and then turned around and ran as fast as she could before I could say or do anything. I caught her, of course, and took it away because it was not something good for her to have, which caused her to have a meltdown. I had to take it away, in spite of her tears, because I am the adult and I generally know whether or not something is good for her to have or to do, even if she doesn’t know it (and even if she doesn’t agree with it!).

Sometimes that’s what we do to God. We insist on making our own way even when we know it’s not what we should be doing, and then we get upset when the outcome is not what we wanted. Just like my granddaughter did in this instance, we decide that we want something, or that we want something our way, and we act on it. In doing that, we often think that we know better than God, or that God doesn’t really understand, and so we disregard God and do our own thing. But in our situation, God as our Creator really does know what is best for us, and has reasons for the boundaries that He sets.

Ezekiel 20:11 communicates this truth when it says, “And I gave them My statutes and showed them My judgments, which, if a man does, he shall live by them.” What this verse is teaching is that God, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, gave us guidelines by which we should live because He knew that living by those would result in the best life possible. But sometimes we think we know better, and choose to do something different, and then we pay the consequences for it.

There are two valuable truths we can take away as leadership lessons from this little thing in life, from this illustration of my granddaughter doing something that she knew she was not supposed to do. First, we need to do the right thing, even if it’s the hard thing. Second, we need to trust God’s wisdom and purpose, even if it doesn’t make sense to us. The willingness to do these two things will benefit us in the long run, and will save us from what would likely be painful consequences.