Tug of War
By Kim Pitman
Greta, my dachshund, loves to play tug-a-war. Every morning after I’m dressed, have eaten breakfast, and walked Greta I stop to play with her for a while. After all, she’s in the house all day by herself. I’m sure she gets lonely.
If Greta wins and gets her toy from me she immediately picks it up and drops it at my feet or in my lap. She wants to keep playing until she’s ready to stop. If I throw it she races to get it and brings it right back. She trusts that I will continue to play with her.
While we were playing this morning I was thinking about God and my walk with Him. I realized that I play tug-a-war with God too. I pray for His help but I don’t totally give it to Him. I pick up worrying about the problem instead of giving it entirely over to Him. I lack the ability to wholly trust God to work it out.
Do you do that too? I found a couple of scriptures that should be an encouragement to us to fully give our problems and concerns to our Holy Father and let Him do the work of fixing the problem. The first one is “Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall.” Psalm 55:22 or “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:7
What amazing promises!
We can turn over to God through our prayers everything with the knowledge and confidence that He will work things out for our own good. Ah! That’s the catch isn’t it? He’s not going to do anything that won’t be beneficial to us. Sometimes what we ask for would not be useful to us. Because God can see the big picture of our lives He does know what we need and sometimes our wants are not what we need. Remember Romans 8:28? “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
So the crux of the matter is that we need to be able to trust Him to know what is best for our lives. We need to stop taking back the concerns and problems that we give to Him to “fix”. Jeremiah 29:11 says “For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” We have God’s promise that He will not harm us but will give us hope and a bright future. But there is that word that’s implied, trust, or to have faith in, have confidence in, rely on, or count on.
So what are you going to do today? Are you going to play tug-a-war with God? Or will you test your faith by completely trusting in God’s promises? Will you go forward with the confidence that if you totally trust Him because of what His word says? My prayer for you and for myself is that we will allow ourselves to be completely dependent on Him and allow Him to work His good in our lives.
Father, we want to trust you. We want to allow you to do your good work in our lives. Help us to trust today and give us the knowledge that if we “cast all our cares on you” that your work here on earth will succeed and be evidenced in our lives by our deeper faith in you. And Father in anticipation we give you all the glory. In Jesus’ name. Amen
All Bible verses are NIV.
Copyright © December, 2007 – Kim Pitman. All rights reserved.
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