Adjusting to Big Ben
IllustrationAnalogy★★★★IF YOU’VE ever traveled to England, you know the English are fairly prim and proper. A lot of the men wear three-piece suits, and they often carry in the little pouch inside their vests one of those round, stopwatch kind of things on a chain. If you ever happen to see a Londoner take out their timepiece to check the time, you will probably also see them look up and then look back at their watch.
Sometimes they will make an adjustment to their watch. What they are doing is looking at Big Ben and adjusting their watch to Big Ben’s time. In London, Big Ben is the standard for the time of day. Englishmen reach into their pockets, pull out their watches, and adjust it to Big Ben.
If your time is different from Ben’s time, Ben doesn’t change. You must change, because there is a fixed standard that is nonnegotiable. God wants us to adjust our ministry, our program, and our thinking to His ministry, program, and thinking for us. Sometimes we look at one another and measure our spirituality or effectiveness by others, but if are not measuring ourselves against the standard the Lord has set for us, then we are not looking at the right standard.
The point
Londoners adjust their watches to Big Ben's time, not the other way around; similarly, we must adjust ourselves to God's fixed standard, not ask Him to change.