When life’s not going along quite like we’d hoped it would be, we know exactly what to do – find someone to blame. Problem is that that whole blame game ends up robbing us of the solution to our problems.

Yesterday on the program we looked at the fact that sometimes we feel as though our lives are under siege. People or circumstances or just the break-neck speed of life means that part of us, that part of us that’s truly us, you know, deep down inside where we live, that part ends up being cut off from real relationships. And so its like life is holding us to ransom and the longer that siege continues the more desperate we become, we can end up developing a siege mentality, survival at all costs; and just forget about enjoying and living life, it’s just about getting by in a siege.

And as we sit in our bunker alone, we finally come to the conclusion that life stinks, and that’s great, that’s the first step, admitting that there’s something wrong. But then, then, instead of doing something constructive about it, we fall back on that tried and proven misery guts approach - finding someone to blame.

The blame game – life’s not going the way it should, you know, it must be someone’s fault, who can I blame? God or the government or my boss or my husband or wife or ... humm… who else is there? The neighbour, the friend the work colleague, the tax system, the kids, the list is as long as our arms. There must be someone I can blame!

Yesterday on the program we looked at the siege of a city, we saw how quite sometime ago the city of Samaria, just north of Jerusalem was laid to siege by the Aramites, their army. And the whole point of a siege is when the army cant attack the city because its too well fortified what happens is the army surrounds the city, cuts off the water supply, cuts off the food supply and starves the people to death. And the King’s job is to be the leader, right, to set the example, to figure out what to do to fix the problem, what the King hears is a story of two women who’ve decided to kill their sons and to eat them. I mean can you imagine a siege doesn’t get much more desperate than killing and eating your children.

Have a look at what this stunning leader, the King, does to solve the problem. If you have a Bible it’s in the Old Testament, the book of 2 Kings, Chapter 6 and I’m reading from verse 30:

When the King heard the words of the women, (that’s the one who told him about eating the kids) he tore at his clothes. Now he was walking around the city wall at the time and all the people could see that he had sack cloth on his body which was a sign of being in morning. And he said, “So may God do to me and more if the head of Elisha the Prophet stays on his shoulders today.”

So he dispatched a man from his presence. Now Elisha, the prophet was sitting in his house and the Elders were sitting with him, and before the messenger arrived Elisha said to the Elders, “Are you aware that this murderer has sent someone to take my head off? When the messenger comes to see you, just shut the door and hold it closed against them. Is that not the sound of them coming?” While he was speaking to them the King came down to them and said, “This trouble is from the Lord why should I hope in God any longer?” Things are bad, mothers are cannibalising their children, the army is surrounding the city, people are starving to death and the King goes “I’m such a brilliant leader, I know what I know how I can fix this, I know, I’ve got it, I’ll blame God! What a strategy! Now that should do it, see, I’ve done it!"

When our lives are under siege we want to find someone or something to blame. Some of them are ridiculous, I mean blaming the weather or blaming a natural disaster or … those things, well, they’re ridiculous. Some of the things that we find to blame are justified. You know when we feel under siege because of our work pressures, maybe our boss is demanding too much, maybe we feel under siege because things aren’t going so well at home or we’ve got financial pressures, and so it may well be that someone or something directly has caused that.

And sometimes people do do things to mess up our lives, war and famine, and abuse, the past, our parents, our spouses. Those people do do things sometimes that put us under siege, absolutely. But let’s just get a revelation here, standing around blaming them isn’t, underline isn’t, going to make things better, “but I’m justified in blaming them,” well that may well be. The question I would ask is: does sitting there blaming them make things any better? Absolutely not! Underline not! In fact if anything playing the blame game can make things worse.

Now I know sometimes we’re justified in blaming people, it happens to all of us, the point that I’m making is that blaming people doesn’t solve the problem. We can become the perpetual victim, blame everything on everyone else and you know what that does? It stops us from taking responsibility for the things that we can do to make it better. It’s like an either or choice, I’ll get tied up in the blame game or I’ll actually just move on and do what I can about the situation to make things better.

Now we can’t always make everything better, we can’t always make things better when someone’s sick; you know its just one out of one people die. And maybe we have someone who’s dying of lung cancer because they smoked. And we can blame them for smoking but is it going to make anything better?

You think about a child growing up to become an adult, when a child is a child they’re responsible for almost nothing. Little children, we feed them we change their nappies, we put them to bed, we give them a roof, and as they grow up progressively the parents hand over, and the child assumes, more responsibility for themselves. Until ultimately, like my two boys who have grown up now, 26 and 24, they’re responsible for their lives, for earning an income for providing for themselves, its a transition. And as we go from childhood to adulthood we learn and we grow up as we take responsibility.

What comes out of your mouth when you’re life is under siege? Let me challenge you, do you play the blame game? And if you do is that blame game a substitute for you taking responsibility for the things that you can do to alleviate your suffering and the suffering of other people? This may be tough, this may be blunt but let me say if you are in that position it is time to grow up.

I made a decision a few years back that when my life was under pressure and under siege I was not going to criticise or blame or whinge or complain, I am not playing the blame game anymore. You know something? Life is unfair sometimes and yes it hurts sometimes, and if God lets me walk through those things I presume that he has me in that place for a purpose. God doesn’t cause all the bad things that happen in my life but sometimes he lets me, and sometimes he lets you have that wilderness experience to help us to learn something.

As for me, I would do whatever I can to make the situation better, even if I can’t do it all, because I serve a God who can do it all. The longer we whinge the longer God will keep us there, absolutely guaranteed. God talks a lot about character in His word, His heart is to see you and me grow up. His heart is to see us firstly learn to take responsibility for the things we can do, and secondly to trust in Him for the things that we can’t do.

What a God, and I would encourage you that if you feel that your life is under siege at the moment to bring that to God because He is in that space with you. As we’ll see tomorrow He will, underline will, get us out of it, if only we’ll let Him.