Frustration: Knowledge & Skill
Posted by Brett Veenstra
I recently changed jobs and while regular paychecks are certainly a boon, there is this great frustration with the current gig. I’m responsible for a large computer reporting system that delivers financial information at a very detailed level. Cool part: I’m an expert at the technology the system runs on; the part that sucks: I really can’t tell my left from my right when it comes to the information that actually sits in the system. I wind up asking questions that would sound like this in an everyday setting: “So why do you think that the sky is slippery when the roads can’t get you to eat?” Sounds crazy eh? Yeah, that’s the look I get from people everyday as I gain the knowledge about my system.
Have you ever felt this way… had a case of not enough knowledge and plenty of skill? How about the other way - no skill and plenty of knowledge. Take for instance anyone who plays “air guitar”… there’s a sprinkle of knowledge with no skill. Have you ever been “haggled” by a saleperson? Knowledge, no skill… skillful salespeople sell you without you ever noticing.
I think being an expert is knowledge intertwined with skill… this takes practice, commitment, failure, growth, and flat out time. Huh, kinda sounds like struggling with the Christian walk.
I think about times when I reacted too soon, knee-jerk like - was that a lack of knowledge or skill? My Christian friends might think that skill has nothing to do with our walk, but I like to think of the walk as a journey of a warrior. We have a king and a holy man to take our guidance from, but we still have to hit the dirt and struggle against the fallen world, ourselves, and the Enemy.
Are you frustrated? Check your skills and knowledge.
I can see "the future"
Posted by Brett Veenstra
I really tripped Connor out tonight… After he finished his homework, I told him I was going to show him how to see “the future”. He lit up and actually stopped slithering his body into a position to see the TV off the ktichen windows.
I whipped out his planner and gave it a bodyslam on the table - his whole body sunk (so the drama). We found his sheet that had all his upcoming milestones and we recorded them all the way out to the two week horizon. Then I had him flip back to today’s page, and asked him to show me the future. He got excited again and showed me his next two weeks. I then pointed to a day before a test and asked him what is special about that day - he wrote “bring home book to study for test” — that’s my boy!
Speaking of the future, do you really want to know? Me too… and yet I keep finding excuses for not reading my own personal future book. Lord, help me to hunger for your Word and wisdom, I wanna be your boy!
FLAT out bad
Posted by Brett Veenstra
It was a wonderful morning…Up before 6 (yeah dude, that’s AM), moved an endless stream of trash bags/cartons/cans to the road for pickup. Since I was away last week we missed our trash day and it always seems like when you go an extra week, there’s more than a week of trash that needs to hit the road.
So I’m pulling out minivan #2 to get at the trash pile in the garage and bump! I think I just drove over someone. I stop, check the mirrors, roll the window down, nothing. I pull back some more, another bump… nothing. I get out and finish the trash run.
I’m just about to climb in the car to pull it back in and notice that my tire is FLAT (bumping mystery solved). I let a curse out just under my breath. I heard it, He heard it, I told myself I gotta stop that.
After spending over an hour and a half figuring out the 20 pages of instructions on changing a flat tire, I had gone through a gambit of curses. I wasn’t speaking curses, I was thinking them and I just couldn’t seem to stop. Does anyone else suffer from a depraved mind? These are the days when I can really relate to Paul’s words:
I don’t understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do the very thing I hate. I know perfectly well that what I am doing is wrong, and my bad conscience shows that I agree that the law is good. But I can’t help myself, because it is sin inside me that makes me do these evil things.
I know I am rotten through and through so far as my old sinful nature is concerned. No matter which way I turn, I can’t make myself do right. I want to, but I can’t. When I want to do good, I don’t. And when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway. But if I am doing what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing it; the sin within me is doing it.
It seems to be a fact of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another law at work within me that is at war with my mind. This law wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin.
This passage has such a double meaning for me. First, incredible comfort that a truly great Christian, Paul struggled with things in the same way I do. Conversely, it is my mind that seems to be the problem instead of the solution (see “In my mind I really want to obey“…), ergo if I couldn’t stop my mind, do I really hate what I was doing?! arrgh…