One of the hardest things for me to do is to let God take care of my life. When things are going good, I thank Him sincerely. When things are going bad, I beg Him to fix it…sincerely. When things are just running along smoothly I sometimes forget to say anything. Upon reflection, it seems I get sincere in seeking His guidance during “feast” or “famine”, and that I credit myself with being able to “handle” my life as long as everything is ok. It’s kind of like, “Ok God, I don’t need to bother you…I’ll handle this part. I’ll come to you for help, when I can’t make it on my own”.
But is that the way God wants us to be? Does He want us to “run” our life or does He ask us to let Him be in control? Matt. 6: 24 says, “a man cannot serve two masters...”
It reminds me of a (true) story you may also have heard. It happened on January 3, 1944 in Leon, Spain. There was a passenger train that was long enough to justify a rear engine to help in emergencies. Each engine had a separate engineer to run their engine. During the journey the train entered into the El Toro Tunnel, and for some unknown reason, the front engine stalled. The rear engineer, realizing a problem started his engine and began to try to “back” the train out of the tunnel. At the same moment, the forward engineer restarted his engine and began to try and move the train forward to get out of the tunnel. Since there was no way for the engineers to communicate with each other, they just continued to try and add more power. This continued for several minutes. They were not moving either way and neither engineer seemed to understand why. The problem was that with both engines running under power, the tunnel quickly filled up with diesel fumes. Over 500 people aboard that train died of carbon monoxide poisoning. In this case there were just too many people in charge of “running” the train and people perished.
As often as I remember, I try to ask God to help me turn “all” of my life over to Him. Not just the parts which I want to pick and choose, not half my life, but give up MY control and turn it completely over to Him. There should only be one engineer on my train of life in which my trust lies; one engineer to guide me to the home terminal. How about you?
Rom 15:13… May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Bob Chilton