What About You?

    Stress. Anxiety. The never-ending feeling of being behind. How often do you experience these in your daily walk of life? 

    It’s human nature to get caught up in the busyness of every day. It’s normal to desire for everything to go smoothly in your life. We all want that. The harsh truth is life never will be completely smooth. You will never have all the answers. We never have control of anything. But, then there’s God. 

    I’ve heard friends say, “What could God possibly do for me? How could having Him make things any better?”, and I’ll be the first to answer back with, “God doesn’t owe us anything.” When God made the world, it was perfect. He called everything he made “very good” (Genesis 1:31). God handed Adam and Eve everything they ever needed, and what happened? Doubt set in. Thoughts and questions of God’s goodness, and our being convinced that we knew better than He does. “[Eve] was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her” (Genesis 3:6). We get caught up in the worldly things in this life and forget God. 

I wouldn’t be speaking about this if I didn’t struggle with the same thing. In fact, I am writing this because I understand and live it almost every day. I will often make work my life. My mind will race, constantly trying to find solutions and figure out problems. And what happens in the end? I feel nothing but worn out and exhausted. Why? Because I once again forgot who controls everything. God. The fact of the matter is we lose our focus easily. There are distractions everywhere. So what do we do about this? We have a choice to make.

Surrender or suffer? I am not you, and I have no power to control what you decide to take from this. But I can encourage you with the choice I am choosing to make. I choose to surrender what I think I know, and choose to trust that God knows better. There are constant questions I have every day like “Why did this situation happen like this?”, and “What would have happened if I did this instead?”. We could worry ourselves and spend our time trying to figure it all out, but what would that do? Truthfully, nothing but wear us out. We have a choice every day we wake up and go about our days with our responsibilities. Will I surrender to God’s will, or suffer trying to fulfill mine? In case you are reading this and don’t know how our story ends, let me paint a picture for you. In Revelation, there is a great white throne and “the one” sitting on it. The One refers to God. There is no hiding from Him. The dead stand before God and these books are opened, books with deeds listed and peoples’ names. All that were before God were “judged according to their deeds” and “anyone whose name was not found recorded in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:11-15). When I read this chapter, I imagine what I would do if my name wasn’t written in God’s Book of Life. Then I think about what I could be doing now, while it’s not too late. 

What can you do now, while you still have time? I choose to surrender. 

What about you?

Shalom Shalom,

Taylor Reed