How to solve a problem.

Greetings!  I've been a terrible blogger lately and am resolved to fix that today.  Life has been wonderful, unfortunately, wonderful in my world tends to mean busy with not enough time to sit down and record my thoughts.  

Last Thursday night I came across a book called "Practical Theology for Women: How Knowing God Makes a Difference in our Daily Lives" (no...men....this is NOT  license for you to skip the rest of this post.  God is equally important in your daily lives, and none of what I'm about to say includes clever anecdotes about shopping, husbands or any colour of nail polish.)  Although I find lots of merit in the text's notes on the importance of the Word, and on Faith especially...part of what I read in chapter 4 today really leapt out at me and I thought it was worth recounting.

"Have you been dealing with an issue that has sent you into an emotional tailspin?  If you are like me, you have allowed your mind to speed through scenarios of how bad the situation might get and what options you have for fixing it on your own.  In these situations, the first thing we need to do is stop.  We do not have to obey fear and anxiety as if they were our masters.  Change your perspective and refocus. 

Instead of envisioning the problem at hand, we envision for a moment our God, beautiful in heaven, well aware of our needs, and powerfully able to provide for them.  Instead of thinking through our options to fix our problem on our own, we meditate on God's supernatural ability to work out our problems in ways we can not begin to imagine.

The Old Testament saints...understood their lives were about something much bigger than themselves.  It's not that their daily problems were inconsequential.  Rather, they had learned to look at their daily struggles from an eternal perspective that provided the context they needed to appropriately deal with those issues.  We too must train ourselves to take our thoughts captive and make them submit to what we know to be true about God.  We don't ignore the details of this earthly life, but we must always read them in context of our eternal reality.

Once we get off the emotional roller coaster that's directing our responses and refocus our spiritual lens to a God-honoring perspective, then we start anew in light of eternity."

May you all stop and consider Christ, no matter how stormy or high the waves of life may be.

[If you enjoyed this, you can read the author's blog or order the book.]