The past year living in Nicaragua has helped me to really appreciate all the innovations that make life in the US much more efficient. I’ve without a dishwasher or a clothes dryer (and we have a four-month rainy season here…), have not had a washing machine the past month, and have had a functioning car about 66% of the time. Lawnmowers are such an extreme luxury I’ve only seen them at a baseball stadium and a golf course. Instead, everyone just cuts the grass (well, actually, everything), with machetes. Oh, and if there is an automatic carwash in the country I’ve yet to find it. At every car wash all the work is done by hand, and it takes at least 45 minutes to get your car washed. Its obviously significantly more work to do any of the above actions without the modern devices that make quick work of them. If I wanted to do my laundry and get my car washed on the same day I better start my day awfully early, because its going to all day.
While nearly all of us love having machines that make our lives easier, its interesting that when we face challenges in life we tend to make things a lot harder, stressful, and time consuming then they need to be. See, we really have two choices when it comes to fighting life’s. Plan A is to go it alone, which is often stressful, time consuming, and not always very successful. Plan B is to fight the battles of life with God’s help. Amazingly, many of us tend to reach for Plan A (the machete) instead of Plan B (the zero-turn radius lawnmower). Yet, look what Paul teaches us in 1 Corinthians 10:3-4:
For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.
God wants to help us as we fight all the battles of life, and He can give us more power than we can imagine. We need to step out of the way and let Him help us. Here’s three things we need to stop doing the hard way, and start letting God help us with:
- Stop seeking what you want, and start seeking what God wants. It’s really that simple guys!
- Stop thinking about how you “deserve it,” and remember that you deserve death. This sounds blunt, but its true. We live in such an entitled world that we start believing we deserve stuff simply “because.” The reality is, what we really deserve in this world because of our sin is death. Yet, God gracefully gives us eternal life. You deserve some pretty bad stuff, but God gives you eternal life anyway!
- Stop thinking you can handle it, and realize you can only handle it with God. Let’s be honest. We can’t handle anything close to all the battles and struggles we encounter. So, instead of fighting a losing battle, let’s handle our battles with God’s help.
