Jeremiah 34:17-20  “Therefore this is what the LORD says: You have not obeyed me; you have not proclaimed freedom to your own people. So I now proclaim ‘freedom’ for you, declares the LORD—‘freedom’ to fall by the sword, plague and famine. I will make you abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth. Those who have violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces. The leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, the priests and all the people of the land who walked between the pieces of the calf, I will deliver into the hands of their enemies who want to kill them. Their dead bodies will become food for the birds and the wild animals.” (NIV)

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This text reminds me of a book in my library about strong-willed children. It’s entitled You Can’t Make Me. I think we all know children like that, don’t we? The problem is that some of them grow up and become adults without changing one little bit. 

Patrick Lencioni’s book, The 6 Types of Working Genius, includes Tenacity as one of the working geniuses. He defines tenacity as “the natural gift for pushing projects, tasks, and initiatives across the finish line to achieve results.” That’s the good side of the genius. That’s what we want those hard-headed little boys and girls to demonstrate when they grow up. 

We were blessed with two strong-willed children. They have turned out to be pretty amazing adults. They have accomplished things we could have only hoped for. Our son’s second-grade teacher said his ability to focus deeply on things that were not germane to the lesson at hand would make him an amazing adult one day. She was right. 

She was also frustrated because she needed him to learn what everybody else was learning. He was more interested in learning things that didn’t have anything to do with what she was saying. It’s not that he wasn’t paying attention; he was. He was simply focused on what was more important to him at the moment. 

Both of our natural-born children learned to see the individual components of an object or an idea and to combine them with other objects or ideas to create something new, different, and better. Now, this may be just a proud papa talking first thing in the morning without the benefit of a second cup of coffee, but I really like that about the two of them. 

It is also true that sometimes tenacity turns us into hard-headed little snots. I am not calling my children hard-headed little snots. They would be very unhappy to hear me say something like that about them. They might have said that about me a time or two, and they may have even been correct. This means I have shown them the shadow side of tenacity. I have provided an example not to follow in those cases. 

That’s good parenting, right?

The problem with the shadow side of tenacity is that it makes things harder than they have to be. This paragraph in Jeremiah 34 tells us God’s exasperation with his people, who made their relationship with God harder than it had to be. What they called freedom was just another form of bondage. 

Unredeemed tenacity not only makes things harder than they have to be, but it also chooses consequences it knows are destructive. Those who live in a state of unredeemed tenacity think they’re smarter than God, more capable than Him in making things work out their way. 

Those of us whose tenacity is redeemed, and those of us who really aren’t interested in being quite so tenacious, understand pretty well that God is smarter than us. He does know the right way, and He would never lead us astray. He always seeks our highest good. 

Unfortunately, these ancient ancestors of ours could not be convinced that they were wrong until it cost them their homes, their lives, or both. They wanted a kind of freedom that wasn’t really free. They wanted to be free of God’s expectations so they could pursue whatever they wanted. God kept warning them that they were about to go over a waterfall, that they were about to fall off a cliff, that they were about to run headlong into hot lava. They chose to go their own way anyway. 

This is not tenacity. This is stubbornness. It’s also stupid. 

What have we learned here today? 

Tenacity is good when it closes all the loops and gets things done. Tenacity is bad when we choose to do those things that will harm us or others. Tenacity makes demands, and when those demands are aligned with God’s mind, which knows all things, and with God’s heart, which loves all people, that is an extraordinary gift. Verse 20 above shows us that prideful tenacity is anything but a gift. It’s a curse. 

Choose the right kind of disruption that gets things done and makes things better in full cooperation with our Father in Heaven. We need that kind of tenacity. 

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I will live a tenacious life aligned and attuned with the mind and heart of God. Our Father, please forgive me for being tenacious about things I should not. Please forgive me for all those times when I thought my tenacity was making things better, when what it was really doing was showing how hard-headed and short-sighted I can be. Make me a positive disruptor, shaped by grace and deployed in truth. Amen.

A Note: I use the dictation app Wispr Flow to write these devotionals. This is a wonderful tool. However, it has not yet learned to use a capital H or a lowercase h when referring to God. Sometimes it gets it right. Sometimes it does not. I tell you this only because I don’t want you to think I’m psychotic. I’m confident the app will learn after repeated use. Until then, smile and know that I am not that great of a grammar and syntax failure.  

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