A Problem is No Problem to God

"How is God using conflict to take my faith from the superficial level of a nice idea to the deeper level of rock-solid reality?" I love this quote from Oswald Chambers because it depicts how we really feel about our lives. How is God going to use the things that we go through? So often we pray the "Oh God!" prayers. The "Oh God!" prayers are the ones where you find ourselves on the floor holding on the table leg of the kitchen table, wailing out in the middle of your house, screaming at the top of your lungs, scaring every creature known to God and man, just to let God know that you have a major problem. I have gone from the "Oh God!" prayers to "I wonder what God is going to do with this?" Often it is easier for us to fly off the handle than to take the handle and give it to the Lord. In 1 Peter 5:7-8, it is written to "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour." I love how we decide, "Okay God, you can have this and this but this over here is mine. I know you can't possibly handle that." That tends to be our attitudes whenever we are going through a trial. I find it humorous when we have the religious sect that say that you only have trials because you don't have faith. If that is the case, I guess we need to remove John 16:33 from the Bible. Joh n 16:33 says that you will have "trials and tribulations." I don't see where it says that if you have enough faith that you are immune to problems. So often we find ourselves blaming God because we have problems and it's against "the promise." The fact of the matter is, He promised that you will have problems in life. But He also said that He will give you no more than you can handle and will make a way out (See 1 Cor 10:13). But I have all these problems and there is no way, how is this scriptural? I prayed about that myself during a time that Sara and I were going through emotionally before we were pregnant with our oldest daughter, Maleah. God placed a revelation in my heart that I will never forget. In Matthew, as I stated earlier, In 1 Peter, it says to "cast your whole care" upon Him. In Matt 11:28: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." Why don't we have rest? Because the moment we set it at the altar of Almighty God, we get in the middle of Him fixing it. What do I mean? We try to tell Him what would be best and complain when it's not going the way we planned. On a side note, God said we were a peculiar people and I often wondered why He said that until now. We want to give it to God but carry it on our own. Back to the point, if we cast the whole care upon Him, we have nothing to be burdened by or have nothing more than we can bear. Think about it. You have given it to God and when that thought comes back to worry you, you give it to Him and it's gone. You don't have a heavy burden and you are walking in peace. In Philippians 4, Paul wrote "be anxious about nothing." God wants us to give it to Him in prayer and He will give us the peace that surpasses all understanding. He wants us to trust in Him with all our hearts and lean not on what we understand (See Proverbs 3). He wants us to walk down the path that He has directed us on. The neat thing is that God promises that He will use what the devil means for our harm and turn it around for our good. In Romans 8:28, Paul wrote that "we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose." We can rest in the knowledge that in the end, God is still on the throne and in control. Simply put, He wants to trust in Him with all our hearts and worry not about the things that are going on in our lives. Keep the faith and keep pressing in!