Let go and let God have His way
by Paul Lawrence
Anne and I have a little garden that has some red currant bushes. To protect the berries from the birds we have put some netting on the bushes. The idea is that the birds can`t get in and have the berries and we get a great big harvest at harvest time.
Recently we were working around the berries when we found that a bird had got stuck in the netting. It had clearly struggled in its own strength to get away and had ended up very nicely wrapped up. We decided to help it out and started to unwrap it slowly. It started struggling again to try to free itself and again got further wrapped up. We kept telling the bird that it was going to be okay and that we knew what we were doing and that we would free it. The bird clearly did not understand English!!
Eventually, we had to get a pair of scissors out to cut the netting, with the bird still struggling and making more of a mess of things. Finally, we managed to free it from most of the netting, and, before we could get the final piece off the leg, the bird decided again to take matters into its own hand and fly off. If only it had just kept still we would have totally freed it and it wouldn`t have been so exhausted.
I guess that bird is like us. Are we struggling in our own strength with problems we can`t get out of? We end up just making things more complex. The Lord always wants to help us and free us, but sometimes we just won’t stop struggling and be still and know that He is God. He sees the bigger picture. He knows how to free us, and sometimes He`s just asking us to be still while He works things out. Psalm 37:7 says, `Wait and trust the Lord`.
Prayer: Lord, today I want to rely on You to sort out the problems I can`t get myself out of. I`ve tried everything in my own strength and things haven`t worked out. I hand everything over to You, Lord, and thank You that I can wait upon You for Your solution. In Jesus` name. Amen.
Paul Lawrence is the Centre Director at Ellel Grange, UK and is married to Anne, who is the Deputy Centre Director for the Grange. He has lived in Africa for over 20 years and China for 5 years. His passion is to see the Lord do bigger and greater things in peoples lives that they cannot do on their own, not just in healings but also in the fun things of life. His belief is that nothing is ever big enough and as a team we can achieve anything if the Lord is at the centre.
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