Dear Friends,
Are you playing the oldest game in the world? What is it? The blame game! And it guarantees that you lose. Today’s devotional will explain.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Genesis 3:12 (ESV)

  The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”

“Accepting full responsibility for all our actions, including our emotional and our behavioral responses to all life situations, is the definitive step toward human maturity. However the tendency to blame our responses on other persons or things is as old as the human race. Many of us grew up as blamers…. We learned to explain away our failures on the grounds that we did not have the right materials to work with, or we even pleaded that ‘our stars were not in proper alignment; the moon was not in the right house.’ The essential sadness is that blamers are not in contact with reality. As a result, they do not get to know themselves. They do not mature. They do not grow. If is a fact of life: Growth begins where blaming ends. The opposite of this blaming tendency is to accept full responsibility for our lives, to become an owner, not a blamer. Owners know that something in them explains their emotional and behavioral responses to life…. Responsibility ensures that we will grow up…. Other persons or situations may stimulate a response, but the nature of that response will be determined by something in me.” [John Powell, Happiness Is an Inside Job, (Valencia, CA: Tabor Publishers, 1989), p. 25-26]