While my family was visiting still another new church, I sat rather sullenly in my Sunday school class. I will be the first to admit I did not have a very good attitude about the whole visitation process. As I sat absorbed in my own thoughts, a phrase from the speaker’s message penetrated my hard heart. He asked the class (which had 100 or so teens in it), “What has God taught you lately?” I stopped in my tracks. I had been so focused on myself and my own animosity towards seeking a new church, I had left God out of the entire process, blocking Him from teaching me anything at all. Since then, while I still am nervous about looking at other churches, I have put more of a focus on what God wants me to get from the message no matter where I am on Sunday morning.. God has taught me many lessons in the two/three months since I chose to listen, but the toughest and the lesson that I am still trying to understand I will share with ya’ll tonight.

        My family life has been anything but desirable over the past year. My spiritual life wasn’t much better. I felt as though I would spiritually face-plant whenever I stood again and lose whatever ground I had gained. The whiny person that I am, I would complain to God about it instead of asking for his help and guidance. I would ask Him stuff like “God, why are You punishing me? Don’t You love me? What happened to ‘all things work together for the good of those who love God?’ because this is NOT good and it doesn’t seem to be turning that way anytime soon!” I was venting about this to a friend and flipping through my Bible as I talked to her on the phone when I cam across a passage from II Corinthians 12:7-10. Paul writes, “So that I would not become too proud of the wonderful things that were shown to me, a painful physical problem was given to me. This problem was a messenger from Satan, sent to beat me and keep me from being too proud. I begged the Lord three times to take this problem away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is enough for you. When you are weak, my power is made perfect in you.’ So I am very happy to brag about my weaknesses.

        Then Christ’s power can live in me. For this reason I am happy when I have weaknesses, insults, hard times, sufferings, and all kinds of trouble for Christ. Because when I am weak, then I am truly strong.” God is awesome about putting me back in the place where He wants me. Sometimes all God wants is for us to completely lean on Him. I am the type of person who likes to have everything already planned and laid out. I don’t like surprises—ever. God has been teaching me especially in the last couple weeks that I need to let Him handle it. While it is easy for me to tell you to lean on God, church answer that it is, it is hard to live out. For me, if I don’t make a commitment everyday to let God handle it, I find it too easy for me to take control. It is like doing the trust fall at Wesley Woods for those of you who went on the retreat.

        I did not like that. I had Brooke M. and Kat in my group and I remember thinking that if I did the trust fall, I would either die or suffer a concussion. Rom and Evan finally convinced me to fall. It was hard enough to fall into hands that I could physically see. I just had to learn to trust that I would be caught (for those of you who were wondering I was caught!). God will always catch you, but God does not always take our problems away. It is my personal belief that we cannot grow in our relationship with Christ without pain. If you are in a place where God wants you to be then pain is going to happen. Doesn’t being a Christian sound fun? But there is hope. Read Romans 8:26. Isn’t that awesome? We have a holy translator. There will be times in life when circumstances have brought you down and you won’t even know what to say to God. Just being open and crying out to Him even if you don’t know what to say is a form of prayer. He knows what is happening in your life, but He can’t help if you shut Him out.

This is definitely something for you to think about and pray about. Are you giving it all to God or just keep trying to handle it yourself?