Last.Damn.Call

Does God tell us to get our act together and then come talk to Him? Are we required to get our life in order before we seek professional help? Does your doctor tell you to fix your health problems before you come to see him? No, no and more no. God is no different. He meets us in our messiness.

God meets us in our mess. Whatever that mess may be. It could be doubting your abilities or your faith. It could be a relationship issue. A work situation. God doesn’t say get your act together, and then maybe we can chat.

God meets us in our mess. We tend to look at bad situations we find ourselves in…and crying out, “Why me? Where are you, God?” Ask yourself this: Did you talk to God before you got yourself in whatever mess you are in? Be honest. Or did you do it your way and find yourself in a real pickle?

Let me be honest. We can pray night and day for God to fix our issues. That’s being REACTIVE instead of proactive, don’t you think? If I prayed for guidance as to whether I should speak my mind (all loud and stupid-like or if I should sit back and wait for the plan to unfold) what do you think God would tell me to do? Lindsey’s initial plan is usually the one that gets me into trouble. I bet yours is, too.

Were we told to learn everything we needed to know before going to school (elementary, college, what-have-you)? No. We needed to come prepared to learn, right? Pencils, papers, books, lunch, and all the things. And with an eagerness to learn. Your teacher (and God) meets you right there and then guides you along. Teaches you the way.

God meets us in our mess. So, we all get in these “messes”, right? Some big, some small, some crazy, some embarrassing. But we have all been there. Some of us more than others.

Let’s say Lindsey does it her way (which I have, and it rarely works out well) but I am always happy to be open about myself for the purposes of helping someone else learn something. If I decided to tackle my issues with drinking “on my own”, I would tell myself, “Put on my big girl pants and be mad and grit my teeth and go at it on my own.” And that ends badly. That foolishly self-made plan failed multiple times.

I very reluctantly spoke to my pastor. He didn’t scream “Repent!” or tell me I was a bad person. He asked me how long it took me to “get into this mess?” Ugh. A while. And how many times had I handed it over to God? Ugh. None. Not really. Maybe some half-ass reaction to something bad that happened…Lord, help me undo this. And at that point, it becomes much trickier. I didn’t think to start in the most obvious place. With God.

What I needed to do was ask God to remove my obsession with alcohol, with damaging my relationships, with ruining everything good in my life…start there. He met me in my mess. Right then and there. Where I was. There was a lot of work to follow, but it all started with laying it down at the cross. Giving it over. That solution seemed impossibly simple and complicated all at once. And it still does sometimes.

God doesn’t expect us to have it all together all the time. We are all imperfect and flawed humans. He DOES expect us to hand our messes over to Him. Get it sorted out properly. Pray and wait. Lay your requests out there the best way you know how. And turn it over. Answers will come. Believe me, they will. And you may not like them. But if you are fully committed to trusting the Lord with all your heart, you can be assured your best interest is at the heart of the matter at hand.

So don’t ever think your “MESS” is too messed up to hand over to God. It could be embarrassing or you may have feelings of regret, resentment, shame, all those feelings we don’t like to feel. But God already knows all this–your feelings, your pain, your mess. He is just waiting for you to quit trying to “go at it” on your own and hand it over to Him.

Some people see this as giving up, but I see it as “Trusting Up” and this puts me at ease. Trusting a Higher Power with the messes we humans make. That’s how I do it these days, and I can tell you that I still find myself getting into messes. BUT if I “trust up” and let a power greater than myself handle it, the answers always come a little easier. And that makes my messes much easier to tackle.