When Your Life Implodes
Life.is.hard. Let’s just be honest. I’m not here to sweet talk anyone. I’m all about being painfully honest with myself and others. This season finds me frustrated, sometimes angry, having more questions than answers and just plain tired. Tired of believing, standing and contending for all of the promises God has spoken, anyone relate?
I don’t have a pile of answers for anyone. But I do have some things to share with all of you out of my honest talks with God. Yep we have had some conversations lately. Like you I have a pile of crap going on in my life that I don’t really care for and I’m fairly certain you do too. So as I’ve been contemplating my “situation” and seeing God bring clarity I thought I’d just feed you off of my plate….
Without our approval or even our consent we can find ourselves smack dab in the middle of it. Stuff happens. We don’t get an email or even a phone call to warn us and then bam! We have to maneuver through a natural disaster that showed up in the middle of our life. Ugh. I hate unannounced company don’t you?
We can’t really plan for these interruptions either. They just show up. I’ve discovered it’s not really the fact that they showed up that is the problem but the fact that we don’t want them, period that messes with our mojo. So when a tsunami arrives it beckons to be addressed. We tend to panic when a flood threatens to drown us.
We can feel shocked, indignant, angry, and frustrated. We often like predictable outcomes. We immediately start to “do” anything we can think of to get past it and it’s effects. At some point down the road we understand it isn’t going anywhere and then we begin to question God. “I thought you promised X and look at what I’m now facing!” Where is my X?
I’d like to introduce a concept we sometimes miss or don’t want to face. We usually trust God to give us X in the way we would like it, how we see it happening and forget He does things the way He wants to and that is the best way. Could this seeming disaster be what God wants to use to produce IN us what we need so we can have X? Could He desire to use it to coax us into a deeper level of trust and faith? I know…not what we want to hear at this point. But we all know that no matter how hard we try this unwanted problem may not be going anywhere WHEN we want it to.
The issue really isn’t the hard thing we are facing it’s what are we doing with the hard thing we are facing that God cares about. We have a choice. We can bemoan it or use it to our advantage. I’ve chosen to use this pile of unwanted manure to learn to trust at a greater level, lean into God in faith, to relax and love Jesus while He works on it and to determine to walk in love with anyone involved in shoveling this in my direction. Because I can’t do anything to change what’s happening.
James 1:1-4 TPT says, “My fellow believers, when it seems as though you are facing nothing but difficulties see it as an invaluable opportunity to experience the greatest joy that you can! For you know that when your faith is tested it stirs up power within you to endure all things. And then as your endurance grows even stronger it will release perfection into every part of your being until there is nothing missing and nothing lacking.” This thing I’ve been handed has the potential to produce in me endurance that when perfected can produce godly character in me like nothing else can. That’s a win win….
How we choose to see our problems makes all of the difference. After my emotions have their say and make me act like I’m 12, I can buckle down and do the hard work of letting it go and trusting God. He is in control no matter what the facts say about it. Is God faithful? Is He just? Does He love me? I’ve often gone to the Psalms where David says to God, “I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.”Never is a strong word.
I’ll be honest, everyday I have to get alone with God and remind myself of these truths. I have to daily hand my messy situation back to him. I get scared, I feel all kinds of ways, BUT I just keep pressing in, keep believing, and keep trusting. Like Peter says in John 6:68, “Peter replied, “Master, to whom would we go? You have the words of real life, eternal life. We’ve already committed ourselves, confident that you are the Holy One of God.” No matter what is going on HE is the answer. Where else would we go anyway?
Let’s pray:
Father you know the situations that we are all facing. You know how we feel and you understand. Today…we turn all of our cares over to you. We trust you again today knowing that you are working on it even though it may not seem like it. We choose to believe your word. We choose to believe you love us. We choose to believe this will work out for our good. We sit at your feet and adore you, love you, seek you and worship you IN this. Not because we like it or want it but because you are worthy. We are committed, we are confident and we are yours no matter what.