When you can’t stop trying to fix it


After a lengthy time of doing all I know to bring resolution to an ongoing difficulty, last week I knelt down, took a hammer and nailed the painful situation to the cross.

Since then, I’ve struggled not to revisit, and must remind myself daily of that act of relinquishment.
Cross of Nails

And then, this morning, I read from A. B. Simpson: “If we wholly trust an interest to God, we must keep our hands off it; and He will guard it for us better than we can help Him…Things may seem to be going all wrong, but He knows as well as we; and He will arise in the right moment if we are really trusting Him so fully as to let Him work in His own way and time. There is nothing so masterly as inactivity in some things, and there is nothing so hurtful as restless working, for God has undertaken to work His sovereign will.”

It’s hard to let something go into God’s hands. It’s harder still to leave it there. Especially when circumstances seem to be going south.

It feels wrong not to act. To lie still in the face of apparent impending disaster seems nearly impossible. Yet all of our acting to this point has yielded no results.

The truth is God works his will in us through this suffering and adversity.

From I Peter 1, “In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith…may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”

The Message says, “…genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine…”

Putting our heartaches into God’s hands and trusting Him with them, helps prove our faith genuine. To lie still, to trust, to allow our hands to be at rest and allow Him to act as only He can in His time will yield a harvest of faith not only in the lives of those for whom we pray but in our own as well.

And if you’re like me and are struggling to stop fixing things, that’s good news.