Ahab: Pouting like a Child

 1 Kings 21:4- “And Ahab came into his house heavy and displeased because of the word which Naboth the Jezreelite had spoken to him: for he had said, I will not give thee the inheritance of my fathers. And he laid him down upon his bed, and turned away his face, and would eat no bread.”  

    Some teenagers are whiners! The second that things stop going their way, they begin to make it very clear that they are not pleased. They cross their arms, huff, and mumble out any words that might be forced out of their frowning mouth.

    As we just read in 1 Kings, this doesn't only apply to teenagers. But I wonder if Ahab was a whiner as a teenager, too? Suppose Ahab grew up in our day. He would probably have been the toddler throwing a tantrum in the store, the kid pouting in the corner, and the teenager stomping down the hall and slamming his bedroom door. My Dad says this a lot; what you do now will stick with you your whole life. If Ahab's mommy hadn't let him get away with whining and crying when he was a kid, he wouldn't have acted like that as an adult.

    A wise man once said, 'When you turn 18, you can't just flip a switch and decide, 'Oh, I'm going to be mature now'. Now is the time to prepare. If you want to be the adult who stays calm when plans go haywire, then be the teenager who acts like that.

    We can't get all bent out of shape every time plans change. If we do, we'll waste half our life pouting about what we didn't get to do. God has every detail planned out, and we shouldn't get mad when He's working it out. When you pout about changed plans, you are pouting about God's plan. Your parents may have changed the schedule, but God is ultimately in control of everything that happens.

    So next time you feel like coming into your bedroom "heavy and displeased" and turning away your face and eating no bread, surrender your day to God and remember that He is in control.