Are You Mowing the Wrong Lawn?

Our lawncare business office got a phone call the other day. It was one of our customers complaining that we hadn’t mowed her lawn that week. We asked the employee who was scheduled to do that lawn if he had mowed it. He most certainly had, he assured us. We told her that she must have missed him.

The next week she called again complaining that we had missed her lawn again. Once more, the employee told us with certainty that he had mowed her lawn. We were getting a little confused at this point and thought there might be more to the story.

The next time the employee returned to her lawn he took a selfie to prove that he was mowing this woman’s lawn. He confidently sent it to the office.

And that’s when we realized what was really going on–

He was mowing the wrong lawn. Somehow, he had gotten her lawn confused with a neighbor’s lawn. Her lawn had not been mowed and her neighbor had some free mowing for a couple of weeks.

How in the world did that happen? And go on for more more than a week? That’s never happened before.

Well, really–it’s kind of the same way we get deceived by false teaching.

We are over here mowing a lawn and when someone tells us it’s the wrong lawn we don’t believe them. It’s that simple. But if we take a “selfie” with that lawn (or, in other words, hold it up to the scrutiny of the Bible) we will see pretty quickly that we are most certainly mowing the wrong lawn.

And here is where humility comes in. Can we be humble enough to admit we were wrong and move to the right place? Hopefully.

But I find that many people aren’t willing to consider that they are even on the wrong lawn.

I just read a quote this morning. I guess it was Providential because it fits in this post perfectly:

Truth invites scrutiny; but error doesn’t like to be challenged.

Biblical truth will stand up to any challenge. If it doesn’t stand up under scrutiny then we are mowing the wrong lawn and we need to move.

Of course, there are so few of us who are even scrutinizing. We aren’t even making sure that we are at the right lawn. We are banking on our families, our friends, our pastors, and celebrity pastors to feed us the truth instead of using our Bibles.

The Bible. The only source for truth. It trumps everything. If what you believe doesn’t match it, you are wrong. If what your favorite teacher teaches doesn’t match it, your favorite teacher is wrong. If what your pastor is preaching doesn’t match it, they are wrong.

So, once again, I encourage you to get in the Word, praying that the Holy Spirit will give you insight as you make a sincere effort to run all through its grid.

Our employee was so sure he was mowing the right lawn that he never even considered the possibility that he wasn’t. Not even a call from the customer caused him to doubt. May we never be so sure of ourselves and our own opinions that we aren’t willing to scrutinize it when we get that “call” to tell us that we may be off on something we have always believed or about someone we have always trusted.

We surely don’t want to be “mowing the wrong lawn” when Jesus returns!