Back when I met my wife in 2002, she was a vocal performance major at Kent State University. This girl could SANNNNNNG!!!! She got trained how to sing opera. She could sing, with no microphone, standing next to a piano, and hit MONEY notes SUPER HIGH, and FILL the room with volume!
But me? I was an “artiste”. 🙄
I was a songwriter. I was a drummer. I was a bass player. I was a producer. I was a guitar player. I was a lyricist. And yes, I sang. So of course, I knew everything about singing!
And then I met this woman, who had the audacity to tell me that I had no idea how to sing correctly! And then she tells me how to do it correctly! I was like “forget you!” And I kept on writing songs, playing music, recording music, and singing like the rowdy rocker that I was.
But I would blow my voice out regularly. I would be off pitch regularly. I couldn’t get a good tone out of my throat.
So one day, 13 years after I met her in 2015, I found this dude named Ken Tamplin on Youtube. I started taking his vocal lessons online.
And guess what, I finally learned how to sing better!
So I came to Sarah and told her- guess what? I’ve been taking these online lessons and I finally get it! I’ve been singing wrong all these years! She was like “I’ve been tryin to tell you!!!!”
These Pharisees were flexing their God skills in Jesus’s face, thinking that they knew God better than the Son of God Himself! I was flexing my music skills, thinking I knew music better than my wife, when she was a professionally trained singer!!! Jesus was professionally trained by God the Father Himself in eternity! These religious kats had no training on him, but they were acting like their religious training outdid His eternal training!
Man, we sure don’t want to be unteachable to God in areas that we need growth, do we? If we don’t know Bible knowledge, we gotta get with some Bible heads! If we don’t know how to pray, we gotta get with some prayer warriors! If we don’t have spiritual disciplines, we gotta get with some spiritually disciplined people! If we suck at Church attendance, we gotta get around faithful Church attenders! If we got anger problems, we gotta get with some calm & collected Christ followers! If we got greed issues, we gotta get around radically generous people!
May we not be like the Pharisees, snubbing their noses at the wonderful work of God! And may we never be so legalistic about our convictions that we don’t celebrate the messiness of ministry and God moving in all different ways in the lives of many different people! If we ask Jesus to get people into our lives to help us grow in the ways He knows we need to grow, guaranteed He’ll put those people in front of us! Will we step into those relationships and be open? Be humble? Be teachable? Be willing? Be repentant? Be willing to change and grow and flourish in Christ? I hope so!
Jesus didn’t put up with any religious nonsense from these religious leaders…