Trusting God with our "If Onlys" and "What Ifs"

Trusting God with our If Onlys and What Ifs? Trust? Whom do I trust? This has been an ongoing question/ problem in my life. “What if” looks to the future and worries about what God might allow. “If Only” looks to the past and grumbles about what God has given. The first leads to anxiety and the second leads to anger. Those who know me well understand that I struggle with both. Instead of giving my anxious heart to God, I handle the uncertainty of the What Ifs of life by employing one of my control tactics (my strategies, my intelligence, and my manipulation of the situation). I am learning to resist the temptation to “help God out”. Waiting is often too hard, too painful, and God just works way too slow for my liking. But when I try to help Him out, I get disaster. My focus is too often on what I can do to get what I want rather than on how I can trust God with those issues.
We can only trust God when our focus is on Him and not on our circumstances. Psalm 141:8 tells us to fix our eyes on our Sovereign Lord and take refuge in Him. Psalm 112:7 says, “ He will have no fear of bad news; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the LORD.” Only as my heart is fixed on my loving Lord can I be at peace in the midst of What IFS and If Onlys.
Dr. Larry Crabb in his book, Connecting, says all problems can be traced to 4 major problems: 1. Trying to get things done in your own power/ not trusting God. 2. Trying to avoid lack of fulfillment/boredom 3. Trying to avoid confusion/lack of knowledge and be right 4. Trying to avoid conflict. He says all of these cause many problems. I focused on the 1st, trying to get things done in my own power, because this is my issue. Unfortunately, the way God, according to Dr. Crabb, corrects this poor tendency is by taking us through the desert. When we are in the desert, we can’t fix things as we have nothing at our disposal. We can’t think clearer, work harder, or be driven more to correct the problem. Why would wanting to think clearer, work harder, or being more driven be a problem? The answer is having a wrong focus; that our focus/trust must be in God and His character, not in our own power and our own character. This should be a no brainer but it is still a struggle of mine. I am just now trying to give up on getting my “Junior God” pin. I have learned that stress comes from trying to do God’s job. I try to start my days by saying, “Lord, you are on your own” and truly let Him be in charge of the day.
I will not give something I value to someone I do not trust. Before I will give my objects of anxiety to God, I must believe that He understands my problems and will handle them. I must believe that He has all things under His control- that He is the blessed controller of all things. We can’t judge God by the circumstances we don’t understand but we must judge the circumstances in the light of the character of God.
Trust is easy when things are easy. However most of the time life is hard and I often fight and pitch fits with God. "Why did you allow this? What good is going to come of that?"...etc. Sometimes He lets me see the purpose, sometimes He doesn't. This is where trust and faith comes in. I will tell you of one example where God showed me what He was doing. We decided to move to a home closer to Russell's place of work. We prayed that God would put us exactly where He wanted us. Four years ago, we found this house. It seemed to meet our needs and I prayed that God would not let us close on this house, if this wasn't the house we were supposed to be in. I prayed that the 2 inspections we had conducted would be terrible if we weren't supposed to buy this house. The inspections only found minor things. We moved in and it became the money pit. In the first day of living here we discovered there was no grout left in the upstairs master shower. We couldn't use the shower because all of the water wasn't going down the drain. This would be the first expensive repair. Next, I was stripping really bad wallpaper out of the kitchen when I discovered mold that was hidden by the wallpaper. We had to have the sheetrock replaced and fix the problem. (The gutters were too small for the house, so the rain was coming down the windows into the house, soaking into the sheetrock. Therefore, we had to replace all of the gutters with bigger gutters. The outside of the house also needed to be painted. More $$$. " “Lord, didn't you give us this house? Didn't I pray? Didn't I ask you? I didn't even LOVE the house, LORD. I didn't HAVE to have this house." I was pretty mad at God. Then, about 6 months later I was walking in the wooded area of our backyard, when I fell in; the ground gave way, and one of my legs fell in.. all the way up to my hip. All I could think about was the scene in Indiana Jones were he is in a pit with snakes. I pulled myself out of there and got back to the house. What was the story? The builder had buried landscaping trash and it had created a sink hole 18 feet deep. We hired people to hauled 2 dump trucks of trees, roots, etc out of our backyard. It took 4 dump trucks to fill the hole in with dirt. I was so glad I didn't loose a child or one of my dogs to this hole. $4000 later, the hole was fixed. About 6 months after that, I heard "running' in the attic. I was like LORD, you have got to be kidding. It took another $3000 to trap the squirrels and roof rats and to seal the house with sheets of metal so they couldn't rechew in. I already have a history of being angry and pouting with the LORD when HE tries to build my spiritual biceps so I was really mad now and just cried...and said "Why?"...to Him a lot. The pest control people came every 3-4 days until we had no more snapped traps/dead rats in our attic. After about 2 weeks of clean traps/ no more captures, the pest company called to say they were coming to pick up the traps and would only come back out if we needed them. So. the pest control man goes into our attic to get the traps and he tells me and the kids to quickly get out of the house. He had turned off the gas feeding the furnace in the attic because we had a gas leak. When we had a company come out to repair the furnace/ the gas leak, they told us that the gas line was in a tight spot and the builder had never tightened this line at all. For the life of the house (15 years), the gas pipe had just been glued on.....THE GAS LINE....just glued on. NOW, I praised God for the rats/ squirrels that He had sent to party in our attic. We would have never gone into the attic. There was no reason to do so. There was no gas leak 3 days before when the pest company checked the traps and if the gas leak had started 3 days after they picked up the traps, you would have different small group leaders and I wouldn't be here. I would have lost my family to a gas explosion if God had not allowed the grief of having rats in the attic.
So...sometimes we have rats and God shows us why. Sometimes we have rats and He doesn't tell us why. So we just have to trust God is good because we know His character. I don't know why we bought a money pit. I don't know why we have lost two babies. I don't know why my 4 year old has a tumor disorder. But ...I know God is good.
Sometimes I believe the lie that I shouldn’t have to suffer. However it is impossible to be holy apart from suffering. True joy is not the absence of pain but the presence of the Lord Jesus in the midst of the pain. Suffering is a pathway to sanctification, a doorway into greater intimacy with God. James 1:2-4 says Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
Sometimes we believe the lie that our circumstances will never change- this will go on forever. The truth is that my suffering may last a long time, but it will not last forever. My painful circumstances will not last one moment longer than God knows is necessary to achieve His eternal purposes in and through my life.
Be encouraged! God is good. God is love and God can be trusted…with all things.