We looked at the Blame Game, and I want to carry on. I want to help you just to start to think about: how you think. I want to speak a message called: You Always Have a Choice. You Always Have a Choice. We'll just pick up where we were going a couple of weeks ago, Genesis 1:26-28. It says: God created Adam and Eve in His image and likeness. When He made man, He made us like Him, spirit beings. He designed us to have dominion in the earth, so it says: He blessed them; and said: be fruitful, multiply, increase, fill the earth; subdue and have dominion. So when God spoke, and it says: He blessed them, it means: He spoke words of empowerment and life into them.
In other words, He expected something to happen. He spoke words that enabled them to go out; that's why, in the heart of every man, is a need and a desire to conquer challenges. Men love challenges. Why do they love challenges? Because God called us to subdue and have dominion! And it's still inside men now. That's why men who don't rise to challenges always live a defeated life. It's something in us designed to rise and conquer, rise and face challenges. Subdue means you've got to overcome something that resists you. So from the very beginning, God's intention is that you and I would face challenges, that required us to step up, face them, overcome them, and bring them into the way God wants them. Isn't that an awesome thought, right from the very beginning. Sometimes Christians get a fuzzy-wuzzy idea that Adam and Eve lived in a perfect world, everything was just perfect, though actually it wasn't. If it was a perfect world, why did God say they had to subdue something? Why is it that He said: you have to bring dominion into the earth, if it was all perfect?
So from the beginning God designed us to live in a world, where we are required to step up and face challenges, and overcome them. You are wired by God that way. You're designed for this. Isn't that really good? Now of course as soon as Adam and Eve sinned, then immediately when God spoke to them, and held them to be responsible for what they had done, they started the blame game. The blame game goes something like this: it's not my fault. Wasn't me, it's the woman You gave me. Don't blame me! The woman - well don't blame me, it's that serpent. Why do You make serpents? They cause so much trouble. I don't - no one likes snakes! So the blame game means we shift responsibility for outcomes away from ourselves, to somewhere else, we won't take responsibility, and the blame game has been practiced every since. We live in a culture which seems to celebrate blame, it's not my fault. It's not my fault. Now you've got to realise this, that freedom and responsibility are connected. Everyone cries freedom, but you've got to realise, it's a twin with responsibility.
You think about this. A child, because it does not take up the responsibility of feeding itself, someone's got to feed it. Because it hasn't got responsibility at bedtime, someone puts it to bed. Because it hasn't got responsibility for cleaning up its nappies, someone cleans up its nappies, so children, relatively, have little freedom. But as they grow, and are able to take on responsibility, then they can actually have more freedom; and it's true as you're an adult, you are required to be responsible. If you are irresponsible, society or government will take away your freedom. In the end they lock you up, and you don't even have freedom to turn your light on and off, or to open the door or shut the door. You're in jail because you were irresponsible; so they're linked, responsibility and freedom. If you want freedom, you must become responsible, so when people get into the blame game, they then lose freedom. The moment you blame someone else, too bad, you're powerless, you can't do anything. We should feel sorry for you, but we're not, because God never called you to be like that, He called us to change.