“Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. “But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.” – Matthew 7:24-27 NKJV
Can you believe it? I’ve spent a couple of decades trying to stop the rain from falling and the floods from rising and the winds from beating…. against somebody else’s house!
Why? Because that person can’t handle much adversity. Wind and waves and floods and trouble tend to cause him to go SPLAT. When someone or something has hurt him, he’s miserable. He wants to quit everything. He plots how to get even. And when he’s miserable, I’m miserable.
And you know what else? I can’t control the wind. Or the rain. Or the floods. It never works. I’m not God. I can’t stop bad things from happening. I can’t stop them from happening to me, and I can’t stop them from happening to somebody else.
It’s impossible to cause the rains not to fall, or the floods not to rise, or the wind not to blow. As soon as I get one crisis under control, another one comes along. And you know what happens?
I succeed, all the problems stay away, and everyone is happy! I wish. Not really. Actually…
I get exhausted.
I get burnt out.
I get nervous, anxious, and depressed.
And all of my efforts don’t stop the rain from falling. It still falls.
I can’t stop the floods from rising. They still rise.
I don’t stop the wind from blowing. It still blows.
Maybe God didn’t intend for me to take the job of controlling the rain and the floods and the wind. Maybe I can’t do it because I wasn’t meant to. Maybe that’s God’s job.
Maybe God doesn’t want me trying so hard to protect somebody else from the hardships and disappointments of life because that person needs those problems to grow stronger. Maybe, if I give up trying to control things I can’t control, that person will get tired of collapsing and look for a better foundation.
Maybe I need to look for a better foundation too.
Maybe that foundation needs to be God. Maybe, if I put my faith in God, maybe God will know how to control things in just the right way, far better than I could ever do.
It would feel like a great weight lifted from my shoulders if I simply gave it to God.
Could I really give it to God? Can I trust God more than I trust myself? I don’t know. That takes a lot of faith.