Sometimes, you’re the problem …

Sometimes life happens to you.

That’s when circumstances beyond your control become difficult realities you have to deal with. The story of Job is a classic case from the Bible of life happening to you.

Yet many of the challenges we face in life come from our own making. When that happens, we can confound our situation this way:

“People ruin their lives by their own foolishness and then are angry at the Lord,” Proverbs 19:3.

We make matters worse by fueling our foolishness with pride, being unwilling to humble ourselves in our obvious guilt, but instead look for a scapegoat. When all else fails, when there’s no one else to blame but ourselves, we get mad at God.

You’ll never get past your blunders, failures, and foolishness until you come to the place where you confess you’re the source of the problem. It’s you. Not your spouse, not your children, not your family, not your friends, not your boss, and not God. It wasn’t the devil that made you do it. It’s your foolishness that has caused the calamity in your life.

James explains our capacity to ruin our own lives this way: “Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away.These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death,” James 1:14-15.

When you finally come to that place when you will confess your sin, you’re finally in a place where the Lord you were angry at can redeem your brokenness and remake you into something whole, holy, and beautiful.

When life isn’t happening to you, but instead is being wrecked by you, who do you blame? Are you angry at God for your own choices, or are you ready to confess your own sin so that God can free you of it?

“Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, ‘I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.’ And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone. Therefore, let all the godly pray to you while there is still time, that they may not drown in the floodwaters of judgment. For you are my hiding place; you protect me from trouble. You surround me with songs of victory,” Psalm 32:5-7.

Scotty