Big God, Little Problem

Do you remember my telling of our experience with the tubular pillow I keep in the Mustang for supporting my wife while sitting in the car?  I had accidentally caught it in the seat belt receptacle and when I unknowingly yanked on it we witnessed an instant snow cloud as the little foam pellets that fill it blew out through the tear that opened up as the response to my exertion.  It took me a few hours to clean up my wife and the car, but there still remained a stubborn residue of the sticky little pellets.  What I didn’t realize was that the whole underside of the passenger side seat was filled with the pillow stuffing…

That is until we decided to drive into town yesterday with the top down on the car!  Everything was fine until I got on the country highway and accelerated up to the posted 55 mph.  Suddenly the snow storm appeared again as a cloud of the tiny, pesky, white pellets began to swirl around the cockpit of the car and stick to everything including, once again, my wife’s legs in a thick film of white.  Needless to say, I was NOT a happy camper at that particular moment, but yet it was so funny looking that I couldn’t stop from laughing!  I think Piper was even enjoying it!  So, I immediately pulled over on the highway, unburied my wife and put the top back up!

At that moment I decided that the best thing was to rearrange my future plans to include a thorough vacuuming of the car!  And there it is again… I was able to be happy and rejoice in the face of a big mess (in my pristine car no less!!!) by dwelling on the results of what I believed my immediate future to be.  In my mind’s eye, the thought of the power of a vacuum became bigger than the piles of white stuff covering everything in sight!  (Hah!  You should of seen the looks we got in the Walmart parking lot as I helped Piper out of the car and then brushed her off to the delight of the shoppers walking by.  I was thankful for the pilots of the two C130 aircraft from nearby Fort Hood who made a low level flyover the parking lot and took the attention off of us!)

My experience yesterday is actually one of the keys of having a future outlook on your NOW.  As Christians our hope should always be in God and His Word over the negative things we see happening around us.  When the negative situations of life happen, our first thought should be to quickly rearrange our perspectives and make sure that we are seeing God and His Word as much bigger and more powerful than that thing that is staring us in the face right NOW!  Maybe the best thing to do at those surprising times is to quickly initiate the rearrangement process by verbally stating: “Big God, Little Problem!” and keep repeating this until He has gotten so big in your eyes that you are ready, assured and excited about the truth that “with God all things are possible.” (Mark 10:27 KJV) is happening for you at that very moment.

Of course this kind of trust takes an ever increasing, experiential relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  It takes time in the Word and on your knees… and it takes practice.  In other words, it needs to go beyond mental assent and get into your heart through the practice of regularly putting the Word of God to work in your daily lives.  I have seen and known a lot of professing Christians over my many years in ministry that have a strong intellectual knowledge of God and His Word, but lack sorely when it comes to the development of a personal, experiential relationship with Him.  When the hard times came… and we know that they do come… they have tended to flounder.

What will happen to you the next time a negative situation hits home?  Will you flounder and fear or stand up and boldly proclaim: “I have a BIG GOD and therefore a LITTLE PROBLEM!”  If that is your response, then I would say as did the old knight in the third Indiana Jones movie, “You have chosen wisely!”  Have a great rest of the week, and as you do, keep asking yourself… “How big am I expecting my God to be in my life right NOW?”