I CAN'T TYPE

I can’t type. I know, for a guy who spends a minimum of 6 hours a day on a computer, that is kind of strange. Don’t get me wrong, I can form words using a keyboard. In fact, I am actually creating this very article using a keyboard. But I can’t TYPE, not really type, as in put your fingers on the home keys and use all ten digits. Nope. I have learned over the years to hunt and peck along pretty well, and make just a few mistakes. I have developed my own style that uses between four and eight fingers, but always elicits a laugh from a genuine typist. Due to the wonders of spell checker, auto correct, and instant grammar check, I get along OK, but I can’t type.

There is no good excuse for my lack of typing ability, although I can tell you exactly how it came about. I took typing in my senior year of high school. Now remember, this was in the mid 1970’s when we did not have any personal computers. We didn’t grow up with a keyboard in front of us so not everyone learned to type at the age of 18 months. But typing sounded like an easy class to fill out my schedule so I signed up. The class was fine, and under normal circumstances I would have actually learned to type in that class. But alas, I was sabotaged. It turned out that I was the only senior boy in a class of about 60 sophomore and junior girls. Even the female teacher was barely out of college – probably 22. There was one other boy, a lowly sophomore, who only served to show forth my great maturity and desirability to all those girls – or so I dreamed. If you think that in a situation like that the senior boy is going to pay any attention to typing, you don’t understand young males – no excuses – just fact. Typing was my favorite class of all time, except, somehow I didn’t learn to type–must have been the teacher’s fault.

So, here I am, shall we say “a number of years” later, and I still can’t type. But a major portion of my ministry consists of communicating the Gospel through the written word. Articles, newsletters, sermon notes, email, Facebook, text messages, web sites, blogs – it is all done with a keyboard. So instead of taking the time to learn to type, I hobble along with my self-taught method. Over the years, I could probably have saved hundreds of hours of time spent fixing errors, not to mention extended the life span of those wonderful people that God has called to edit my writing (thank you Colleen, Jen, and Michelle) had I simply learned the correct method in the first place.

The point is that we do the same thing in so many areas of life. For whatever reason we fail to learn a basic principle of Godly living. Maybe we don’t know how to make relationships work long-term because our families were a mess and we didn’t learn the Bible. Or, we don’t learn how to give an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. We don’t know how to get angry, and then work through to genuine forgiveness. We have never been taught how to consistently honor God first in every area of life. We don’t know how to seek God’s face from a place of confidence, because we were taught that God is still mad at us about our sin. We live in guilt, shame, condemnation and fear, because we never knew any other way to do it.

But we live on, so we develop our own little systems for trying to protect ourselves, and cope with our handicaps. At best these systems hide our problems from others, at worst they magnify the problem until it destroys our lives. The good news is that Jesus is The Great Renovator. When the Bible tells us to submit ourselves under the mighty hand of God, and He will lift us up, it means what it says. When Paul writes “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:1, 2, NIV), he means that God will day by day remove our old habits and tendencies and replace them with ones that are filled with His life.

I know that I could learn to type right if I put my mind to it. But I have been doing it this way for 30+ years. Breaking these habits and building new ones feels intimidating. But where our spiritual and emotional life is concerned, God is a master at teaching old dogs new tricks. He works from the inside out, and literally transforms us. Don’t ever think that you are too old, or too far gone, or have been struggling with something for too long. The only “too's” that matter in this realm are that God is too awesome, too merciful, and too committed to you to allow you to fail.

You don’t even have to identify all the problems, just form one single habit and live it out faithfully every day. That one habit is, seek Him first and early. If you will do that, and respond in a positive way to what He shows you, transformation is inevitable.

Now to re-read this and fix all the mistakes….