So this morning I was laying in bed and I started thinking about how we set expectations on almost everything but I was specifically thinking about how we do it with God. Many times in doing this we set ourselves up for disappointment because we expect the infinite creator of the the universe and who knows what else to perform within our limited view. You see we tend to focus on the symptoms, you know the higher level stuff that we can touch and control. He deals with the root cause. He started reminding me of examples of this that I have encountered.
The most recent one had to do with me starting to have "stomach issues" (I'll spare the details), at one point I lost about 15 lbs. in 5 days, got that under control after seeing the doctor and then it started again and again got the symptoms under control. Then a few weeks ago I got hit with horrible abdominal pain accompanied by nausea and all the fun stuff that goes along with it. Needless to say my wife took me to the ER at 3am and later that day I was in surgery having my gallbladder removed. You see I was having some symptoms but there was nothing until the pain hit that pointed to the deeper issue of the gallbladder, even the ER doctor was surprised because of where the pain was and I hadn't really had any other painful flare ups. But through various tests that went deeper they were able to find the cause.
Some other examples come from times of ministry. My wife and I have been involved in a couple of different Healing Rooms and other ministry opportunities. In these there have been countless times where people would come to get prayer for one thing and Holy Spirit would lead the team to pray for things that had nothing to do with their request, He would lead us to something deeper and once that was dealt with whatever it was they wanted prayer for went away.
And how many times have we prayed "but God if you only give me this one thing and it will make all these other things go away "? And He comes back and says "hey I want you to go serve this homeless guy" you come up with excuses not to are finally obedient and He blesses you anyway and the next thing you know your master plan for fixing stuff is no longer relevant and the things you thought needed fixing start to disappear.
I guess all of this is meant to be a reminder and an encouragement to let God be the Lord of your life, He knows more than you do and His plans are way better than ours. So why don't we partner with Him, be quickly obedient and let Him help us work out the root causes of what causes us pain and discomfort isn't He the Great Physician after all?
