Learning to Trust When You Feel Stuck or Helpless

Inside: It’s hard to navigate that line between trusting God and taking things into our own hands. We can start by not filtering God’s promises through the lens of our expectations. ~

Years ago, my laptop was updating—very slowly—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.”

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.

This is not what we expect when Microsoft tells us it’s installing updates that will make our computers run more smoothly, is it? 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 technician who was familiar with the issue. But this guy’s only solution—to start from scratch and reinstall Windows—would have caused us to lose everything since our last backup several months earlier.

Old-School Answer

Thankfully, 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.

All these years later, the irony of the mid-update message from Microsoft still amuses me. 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)

One Big Difference

God’s promises are 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 fully expect my computer to work when the installation is complete.

That doesn’t always happen, of course. Although Microsoft is a powerful corporation, it’s comprised of finite, fallible human beings. The company sometimes makes mistakes 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.

Unknown Results

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.

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.

Our Only Option

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—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

P.S. I’m linking up this week with #tellhisstory, InstaEncouragements, Let’s Have Coffee and Grace & Truth.