The Fruit Determined That Was a Lie

I have spent a significant portion of my life being confidently wrong.

Not confused.

Not uninformed.

Confident.

There is a very specific kind of embarrassment that comes with looking back at a season of your life and realizing that people were trying to tell you things you simply did not want to hear. Not because their advice was bad. Not because I had better information.

I just wanted to do what I wanted to do.

& whew, have I paid tuition for that degree.

There was a version of me who could be in immense debt and still justify the purchase. Heartbroken and still defend the relationship. Angry and still explain why my response was warranted. Completely exhausted by the consequences of my own decisions while somehow remaining deeply committed to the decision-making process that got me there.

That is a level of confidence I pray never returns.

The scary part is that I wasn’t intentionally trying to destroy anything. I genuinely thought I knew what I was doing.

That’s what made Proverbs 12:15 feel less like something I was reading this morning and more like somebody had pulled out my old financial statements, relationship history and emotional receipts and laid them across the table.

“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.”

Oh.

Because apparently the opposite of wisdom isn’t always ignorance.

Sometimes it’s certainty.

Sometimes foolishness looks like being so convinced that my way is right that I no longer consider whether my way is working.

& suddenly my mind went straight to Kuzco.

Which is humbling because nobody wants God to reveal a character flaw through The Emperor’s New Groove AGAIN before sunrise.

Yet, here we are.

Kuzco didn’t have an information problem. He had a perspective problem. His world made perfect sense as long as he remained at the center of it. His desires were reasonable because they were his. His decisions were correct because he made them. Everyone else simply needed to adjust.

& unfortunately…

I have had some Kuzco seasons.

No llama transformation.

Spiritually? Llama adjacent.

The older I get, though, the more I realize that stubbornness isn’t always standing firm. Sometimes stubbornness is refusing to reconsider something after the fruit has already told me it isn’t working.

& THAT is what made something I learned called the principle of improvement hit me square in the chest:

I will not experience improvement if I am unwilling to make adjustments.

Simple.

Painfully simple.

Also, disrespectful.

Because I have absolutely prayed for God to improve things I was unwilling to change.

Improve my relationships, Lord.

Okay. Are you willing to change how you communicate?

…next prayer.

Give me peace, Lord.

Okay. Are you willing to stop rehearsing everything that steals it?

…Father, you know my heart.

Grow me spiritually.

Okay. Are you willing to become disciplined?

Now why are we making this about me?

The principle of improvement forces me to confront something I would much rather spiritualize: I cannot keep demanding different fruit while protecting the same seed.

If I want improvement in my relationships, mental health, spiritual health, finances, work, marriage, habits or character, something somewhere may require adjustment.

And adjustment requires reconsideration.

That word is important to me.

Because reconsidering something does not mean I am weak, unstable or incapable of making decisions. Sometimes reconsideration is evidence that wisdom has entered the room.

I know things now that I did not know then.

I have lived through consequences that taught me things confidence couldn’t.

So why would I keep proving loyalty to an old version of myself simply because she made the original decision?

Some elevation requires me to reconsider the way I am doing a thing.

Which raises the harder question:

Do I love the result I say I want, or am I more attached to my way of getting there?

Scripture gives us people who had to answer that question when the stakes were high.

Noah had to build an ark before rain validated his obedience. He couldn’t wait until the instruction looked reasonable.

Ruth had to choose between the dysfunctional past that was behind her and the uncertainty of the future with moving forward.

Esther had to risk what God had given her to accomplish why He had given it to her. Her position wasn’t merely something to possess; it had a purpose.

Then Jesus enters Gethsemane and gives us the ultimate picture of surrendered wisdom: “not My will, but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

Different people.

Different circumstances.

Same tension.

My way or God’s.

Comfort or calling.

Familiarity or faith.

What I possess or why He gave it to me.

Because some decisions don’t just produce consequences.

They produce seasons.

& some seasons have the potential to become cycles.

That is why not every decision carries the same weight. There are moments when what I choose today can become something I have to live inside tomorrow.

I’ve done that before.

Debt taught me that.

Heartbreak taught me that.

Anger taught me that.

I don’t say that to shame the woman I used to be. I understand her better now. She survived a lot, and self-reliance made sense to her because relying on herself had gotten her through things.

I can have compassion for her.

I just cannot keep letting her make today’s decisions.

Because wisdom is here now.

& wisdom changes my responsibility.

It also changes who gets access to my ear.

“The wise man listens to advice” assumes I know who to listen to.

That part matters.

Everybody is rich somewhere and poor somewhere.

Someone can have extraordinary business wisdom and terrible relationship wisdom. Someone can know Scripture and still lack emotional maturity. Somebody can be brilliant financially and have absolutely no business advising me about marriage.

Wisdom isn’t merely asking, “Do I trust this person?”

It is asking, “Is there fruit in the area where I am receiving their counsel?”

Because what enters my ears eventually influences what comes out of my mouth.

& apparently God wasn’t finished with me.

Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.”

I’ve usually read that as a warning about how I speak to other people.

This time I had to consider what my words have been producing in me.

Because words are seeds too.

If I constantly say, “I’m overwhelmed,” I begin approaching everything from overwhelm.

If I keep saying, “I’m just like this,” I can turn a behavior God wants to transform into an identity I’m determined to protect.

If I constantly say, “nothing ever works for me,” eventually disappointment becomes the lens through which I interpret everything.

My words become thoughts.

My thoughts influence attitudes.

My attitudes influence actions.

My repeated actions become patterns.

& patterns, given enough time, become a life.

So I cannot continually speak death and then be confused about why I am struggling to recognize life.

deep breaths

& this is where confession becomes much deeper than “God, I’m sorry.”

The Greek word homologeō, often translated “confess,” carries the sense of acknowledging or agreeing, literally speaking the same.

Confession means I stop negotiating with God’s description of something.

If God says it’s pride, I don’t rename it confidence.

If God says it’s fear, I don’t automatically baptize it as discernment.

If God says I need to change, I don’t respond with a 47-slide PowerPoint or proposal explaining why my behavior is actually completely reasonable given the circumstances.

Because baby, I can build a case.

That’s part of the problem.

Training Day gives me the darker picture of that. Denzel is confident. Commanding. Certain. He can justify his methods because he has built a worldview in which his methods make sense. However, this ultimately became his demise.

Which made me ask myself something uncomfortable:

How many things have I defended simply because I was good at explaining them?

Being able to justify something doesn’t make it wise.

Being confident doesn’t make me correct.

Being hurt doesn’t make every response healthy.

Having survived one way doesn’t mean I am supposed to keep living that way.

Sometimes the smartest move I can make is reconsideration.

That doesn’t erase who I was.

It honors what God has taught me since.

I can look back at the woman who was in debt, heartbroken, angry and determined to figure everything out herself and say, “Girl… you were doing entirely too much.”

I can laugh now because grace has given me enough distance to see her clearly.

She survived.

She learned.

She grew.

She also made some terrible decisions.

All of that can be true.

The difference is that wisdom is here now.

& once wisdom arrives, I don’t get to pretend I don’t know better just because my old way feels familiar.

The principle of improvement is painfully straightforward:

If I want improvement, I have to be willing to make adjustments.

Maybe that means changing what I do.

Maybe it means changing who I listen to.

Maybe it means changing what I say.

Maybe it means admitting that something I once defended no longer deserves defending.

Because growth isn’t always God giving me something new.

Sometimes growth is God showing me what can no longer come with me.

& perhaps maturity is finally becoming secure enough to say:

“This way made sense to me once. It doesn’t anymore.”

That’s not failure.

That’s wisdom.

That’s improvement.

That’s a smart move.

& praise God I apparently learned it before He had to pull a Kuzco and turn me into a llama.

Although considering my track record with listening…

I would not blame Him for keeping that option available.