Loads worse than...

When I walk into the thick of trouble, keep me alive in the angry turmoil. With one hand strike my foes, With your other hand save me. Finish what you started in me, God. Your love is eternal—don’t quit on me now. (Psalm 138:7-8)

I am one of those individuals who likes to do things for myself, sometimes to my undoing what I have done a couple or more times until I get it right. It has been a hard thing for me to trust God with stuff I think I can handle on my own, but hear this confession for what it is worth - whenever I do it on my own, there is a whole lot of 'undoing' that needs to be done! I walk into the thick of trouble a lot of the time and forget who exactly is to be in control of the situation! If you are like me, you are ever so grateful when that one hand wards of the evil and the other one grabs you up and wraps you into those arms of protection so desperately needed.

God isn't finished with me yet - how about you? I would like to propose that if you are still breathing air in on this earth, God isn't finished with the work he has begun in you. That means we are all in this together, my friends - getting this dependency upon God rather than ourselves down pat. Until that time, we are likely to go through moments where we take things on we shouldn't, remembering all to late that God wanted us to trust him to guide us through that stuff rather than us doing and undoing it all ourselves. Our psalmist says it well - "keep me alive in the angry turmoil". Isn't a great deal of that angry turmoil the result of us having to 'undo' what we messed up in the first place?

Finish what you started depicts something else - God began something - got us off on the right foot - but then somewhere along the way we took over. He started us off right - but somewhere we made the choice to take things into our own hands and attempt to 'walk' without any really 'trustworthy direction' in our lives. I cannot cop a 'not guilty' plea on that one, for I am far more stubborn than you might think. If you look at the many things I have had to 'undo' in this lifetime, you will soon see there are many moments God started me out in the right direction, but somehow I took the reins and 'missed the mark'. At every one of those twists and turns, I have had to ask God to finish what he started.

Does he hold this against us? Not at all - in fact, he embraces us in his grace and sets us up again to move in the right direction. If you are sensing God's tremendous patience with some area in your life that you find you are constantly 'taking the reins out of his hand', don't be discouraged. He still has one hand outstretched to ward off the bad that could come from that mistaken trust in ourselves and his other one is wide open to grab each of us back up into his arms of grace. We might not appreciate his presence with us, but if he were not there, the 'angry turmoil' we might experience would be loads worse! Just sayin!