Last week, my blogger friend Linda took the concept of a birthday list to a whole new level.
Instead of sharing a collection of items she would love to receive from her family and friends when she turned 63, she perused her blog archives and came up with, as she described them, “63 random quotes from the past five years”—all of which contain the words “love” or “I love …” in some form or fashion.
It was my daughter Molly’s favorite joke when she was small.
“Knock, knock,” she’d say.
“Who’s there?” we’d answer.
The imagery is in our songs and catch phrases, this idea of being “on fire” for God. I don’t know when it first became popular in Christian circles—maybe during the Jesus Movement of the 1970s, maybe some other time.
Intertwining fire with faith not a new idea, of course. The disciples on the road to Emmaus said they felt their “hearts burning” as Jesus explained the scriptures to them (Luke 24:32). When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, tongues of fire rested on the disciples (Acts 2:2-4).
The Bible also speaks often of the “refiner’s fire”—the work of God that tests and shapes our faith and character. And God Himself is described as “a consuming fire” in Hebrews 12:29.
Even so, none of these have to do with that passionate, “on-fire” feeling frequently associated with youth camps and mountaintop experiences. I’m not denying such feelings exist—they’re real, valid and sometimes life-changing. But because they’re not necessarily sustainable, not having them can often be a source of guilt.
We’ve had a bit of a break this past week, but overall, it’s been unseasonably hot and dry around here this summer. This is typical Kansas weather for July and early August. But when the temperatures soar, the grass goes dormant and the rain clouds disappear in June, it can be downright discouraging.
That’s why an unexpected rainstorm that blew in a couple weekends ago was such a relief, physically and emotionally. You don’t realize how parched you are from the oppressive heat and lack of moisture in the air until the heavens open and dump out an inch of rain on a Saturday afternoon.
A few months ago, my laptop was updating and taking its own sweet time about it. I don’t normally pay much attention to these regular Microsoft installations, but I happened to be looking at the screen when the following message popped up: “Leave everything to us. Don’t turn off your PC.”
By this time, I was starting to wonder why the update was dragging on so long, so my first thought when I saw the message was, “Uh, that’s not very reassuring at all.” (Then I took a picture, because I somehow had a feeling this wasn’t going to go exactly according to plan.)
Turns out, my hunch was correct. When the update finished, the entire desktop was gone and the laptop was stuck in some kind of Groundhog-Day cycle that brought up the same troubleshooting screen no matter what option we selected.
Naturally, this is not what I expect when Microsoft tells me it’s installing updates that will make my computer run more smoothly. The company said it would take care of everything; instead, a documented problem with the update caused a massive headache at my house for a few days.
Randy finally spoke to a Microsoft technician who was familiar with the issue. But his only solution—to start from scratch and reinstall Windows—would have caused us to lose everything we’d saved since our last backup in January.
We obviously didn’t like that option, so my resourceful husband dredged up his high school computer knowledge and used DOS commands to save all the files from the laptop onto a handful of thumb drives.
Bullet dodged, problem solved, lesson learned. (We’re backing up more frequently from now on, for sure.)
Weeks later, I’m still amused by the irony of the mid-update message from Microsoft. Oddly enough, it also reminds me of promises in the Bible that encourage us to rely on God instead of ourselves.
• “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5-6)
• “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him, and He will act.” (Psalm 37:5)
• “Cast all your anxiety on Him because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7)
• “Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you.” (Psalm 55:22a)
God’s promises are sort of similar to Microsoft’s, but there’s one big difference. When one of the world’s most trusted names in technology says “Leave everything to us” in the middle of an update, I have every reason to expect that my computer will work when the installation is complete.
That doesn’t always happen, of course. Microsoft is a powerful corporation, but it’s made up of finite, fallible human beings. The company sometimes makes mistakes that it’s unable to fix.
God, on the other hand, is all-powerful, perfect and infinitely trustworthy. But when He says, “Leave everything to me,” He gives us no guarantee that we’ll get the result we want. While it’s true that He often answers our prayers in amazing, remarkable ways, we’re not buying a specific, certain outcome from Him when we choose to trust Him.
Situations don’t always turn out like we hope, or wish, or might even reasonably expect. Sometimes news is bad, the answer is no, or approval is withheld. Sometimes hearts don’t change, the way gets longer, the pain gets worse.
Things can get especially sticky when we are working through situations and problems that are at least partly out of our control. It’s stressful when we lack all the information. It’s frustrating when we have to rely on other people who may not have our best interests at heart, people who do things differently than we do, or even those who may not know what they are doing at all.
I’ve found myself here lately, with issues more serious than a malfunctioning laptop. Maybe you have too.
Randy was able to fix our computer without any help from Microsoft. But life doesn’t always imitate technology, does it? It’s hard to know when to act and when to wait. It can be tough to see that line between trusting God and taking things into our own hands.
Worry hovers, anxiety threatens, irritability rises.
In such cases, trusting Him is our only viable choice, one that must be made daily, hourly—perhaps even moment by moment. In the middle of a phone call or in the middle of the night. When work piles up around us or all we have left to do is wait.
So we pray—for wisdom, for patience, for discernment to see what’s really in front of us.
“Lord, be gracious to us! We wait for You. Be our strength every morning, and our salvation in time of trouble.” (Isaiah 33:2)
And we actively, intentionally and perhaps even verbally decide again to trust Him—not to perform a certain way or work everything out exactly how we prefer, but to be our strength and our salvation, our help and our refuge, our advocate and our hope.
When God says, “Leave everything to me,” and we choose to obey—over and over again, confidently or with fear and trepidation—the promised result is far more precious than any desired outcome.
“You will keep in perfect peace the mind that is dependent on You, for it is trusting in You.” (Isaiah 26:3)
♥ Lois
God often answers our prayers in amazing, remarkable ways, but we’re not buying a specific, certain outcome from Him when we choose to trust Him. Share on X When God says, “Leave everything to me,” and we choose to obey, the promised result is far more precious than any desired outcome. Share on X
I heard a sermon about encouragement a few weeks ago.
It covered a single passage of scripture, so the application was limited to what the speaker found in those few verses. As I listened, however, it occurred to me that encouragement is not always a one-size-fits-most endeavor.