Leadership Thought: The Day I Tried to Outsmart God and Lost and My Life and Ministry Changed

Dear Friends,

It all started when I tried to manipulate the will of God. Did you ever do that? You wanted something so badly that rather than just sitting back and trusting God for the decision, you went ahead and tried to manufacture the answer yourself.

We often quote Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path.” I knew the verse, could even quote it from memory, but had it fully impacted my life? The answer was no.

Let me share my story. It was in 1968 when I was teaching and coaching at a military prep school in Syracuse NY two years following my seminary graduation. The school was experiencing financial pressure and was about to be taken over by another private boarding school. Since we had little leverage regarding the retention of faculty, the new school was sending over their administrators to sit in our classrooms to observe our teaching  and then to decide whether we were to be retained following the merger. Those of us on the Manlius faculty resented what we perceived to be an elitist attitude of the teachers evaluating us and ultimately determining our future. Several of my friends had already been informed that they would need to look elsewhere for work. 

It was time for my interview with the headmaster of the new school, and this meeting would inform me  of my fate. I thought to myself, “If I am not going to be retained, I wanted to have the satisfaction of resigning before I was let go. So, before I walked into his office, I wrote a note of resignation, and I stuck it in his secretary’s mail slot. His secretary was not in the office at the time. I figured if I was informed during the meeting that I had been retained, I would pick up my letter from the mailbox on the way out from the meeting and no one would ever know of my written resignation. However, halfway through my conversation with the headmaster, and before I learned my fate, his secretary walked in with my resignation letter and handed it to him to read. “Well, Mr. Crenshaw,” as he read my letter, “it looks like you have already decided what you are going to do, and I want to wish you the best of luck as you leave our school.” I was speechless, as you might imagine. I was caught red handed in my deceptive behavior. To this day, I never knew what the outcome might have been had that letter had never been written.

We have probably all done some stupid things that we have regretted. We wanted something so badly that we took things into our own hands and tried to manipulate the answer we desired. It just doesn’t work, however, and I am sorry that in my young, naïve spiritual faith, I had not learned that lesson. I hope that some 50 years later, I am a little wiser in the way I address such experiences. Selfishly, I wanted to have the last word, and so to try and do that, I sought to manipulate the process.

In every situation, God always has the last word, and it is foolish for us to think that in our own strength and wisdom we can outsmart God or change the outcome through our own attempts at engineering.

We have probably all heard the expression, “Don’t get mad, just get even.” That way of thinking is not God’s way. You and I need to learn to trust God with every decision in our lives. The Bible says, “God is a just God, and He will settle and solve the cases of his people.”(Hebrews 10:30)

I felt justified playing games with the headmaster. He was impacting the lives of many of my colleagues, and I was determined that I was going to outsmart him. In reality,  I outsmarted only myself and that is the lesson that many of us have had to learn the hard way.

We need to stop playing games; trying to manipulate God’s will.  needed to pray for the headmaster’s decision, trust that God would work through him  and then whatever the outcome, gladly accept it as being a part of God’s will.

I am glad to say that things worked out the way they did. I really didn’t want to teach  in that new school, and besides, I was now able to pursue a full-time position at the church where I was also pastoring part time. God knew what He was doing, even if I didn’t. Aren’t you glad He does?

Yours in faith and friendship,

Tom