When you feel stressed or encounter difficulties, do you let those stresses and difficulties alert you to your need for God, or are you quick to solve them yourself?
One Saturday morning during a Pause Ministry men’s meeting and breakfast, a title on the book shelf caught my eye. It was “The Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual”. Of course, this was a complete guide to fixing and maintaining anything and everything around your home. But it made me ask the question, “How many of us have that Do-it-yourself mentality when it comes to fixing that which is broken in our inner self? How many of us are quick to give advice or solve a problem before hearing God on a matter? How many of us do it “My Way” and not God’s way?
Some trivia – In 1968, Frank Sinatra recorded a song entitled “My Way”. It was also the title of a record album, for those of us who remember record players, and a song that hit #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. It became so popular that, just to name a few of the dozens of artists who recorded it, there was Elvis Presley, Paul Anka, Tom Jones, Luciano Pavarotti, Andy Williams, Gipsy Kings, David Bowie, and U2. The Three Tenors performed the song on July 22, 1996 during their concert in East Rutherford, New Jersey at Giants Stadium. The version by Elvis Presley even went Gold in the U.S with over 1,000,000 recordings sold.
And now, the end is here
And so I face the final curtain
My friend, I’ll say it clear
I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain
I’ve lived a life that’s full
I traveled each and ev’ry highway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way.
Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way.
For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows and did it my way!
We are in a world today that stresses self-sufficiency. You can find almost any type of self-help literature for fixing things, but so few of us go to God first. Although self-sufficiency is acclaimed in our society, the “I can fix it myself” mindset does not bring the peace of God, nor does it bring abundant living in Christ.
Just out of curiosity, I did a Google search with the keywords “I can fix it myself”. The query returned a number of self-help book titles such as You Can Heal Yourself, or You Can Heal Your Life, and other mind over matter titles. All were definitive guides to managing our own spirituality and energy without God. Many of these titles can also be found by querying the keyword “spirituality”. Spirituality, according to one definition, is the “progressive unlearning of the strange ideas about God you’ve been taught…”.
Another definition of spirituality and in a Biblical context, the term means being animated by God (Waaijman, 2000), to be driven by the Holy Spirit, as opposed to a life which rejects this influence (Wong, 2009). Such spirituality emphasizes dependence on God. For those it is the belief that Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. If we abide in Him and He in us, we will be fruitful and productive and at peace in Him, for apart from His Way we can do nothing (see John 15:5). God did not instruct us to deliver ourselves from our stresses and difficulties and our brokenness. Rather it is God on whom we should set our hope, whom we should rely. It is He who will deliver us (2 Corinthians 1:10).
We are a society that is emotionally driven. Our decisions are a mix of our feelings and of our thinking, and because we are human, we are this way. “The mind is the most restless, unruly part of mankind” (April 21, “Jesus Calling”). The Bible, however, teaches that successful resolution of problems and difficulties is not the product of self-dependence, but instead the product of surrendering our difficulties to God, and by being grounded in biblical principles.
Prayer: Dear Lord, help me to come to you daily for deliverance from all my cares and worries, fears, and sorrows. Help me to rely on You for answers to life’s problems. Help me to do it “Your Way”.
Copyright 2014 by Bill Hutzel
So true. So pervasive. Be in the world, but not of the world.
Thank you Mark for your comment. Like you said, “we are to be in the world, but not of the world.” This is so difficult at times given peer pressure, the daily stresses of work, afflictions, past memories, and unresolved issues. It begs the question then, how do we remove ourselves from the influences of the world? It seems that we are either in the flesh or in the spirit, but there is no gray area. What I have found helpful is that we are infused daily with God’s word so that we are sensitive to the promptings of the Holy Spirit; inoculated against the world so to speak.
As I was reading my “Jesus Calling” devotional for this morning, the following stood out to me. It was timely, wouldn’t you think? It said, “Do you trust Me to orchestrate your life events as I choose, or are you still trying to make things go according to your will? If you keep trying to carry out your intentions while I am leading you in another direction, you deify your desires. Be on the lookout for what I am doing in your life. Worship Me by living close to Me, thanking Me in all circumstances.