Fill, not Fix

“There’s no pain the Lord can’t fill,” sings Yolanda Adams. Oh. I thought. Fill – not FIX.

This radically contests my old ways of thinking about God and the way He loves me. His methods of healing and renewal and victory are different from my own. It’s not that He loves when I do the right things or, aside from moral decision-making, am smart enough to elect the best sequence of strategies to accomplish my goal. I’m reminded of Gideon being sent by God with a tiny army so that it would be obvious that Gideon triumphed because of God’s assistance and presence with him in battle.

I won’t win the battle by outsmarting the circumstance and having the better methods. No. I win the battle when God enters the situation and starts re-ordering exactly those circumstances where I look and feel weakest of all. This way, I know God got the victory. It was not by anything I did, not by any feat of self-control or self-reliant powers of IQ or EQ.

This fact about who God is gives me hope in circumstances where I feel the odds are stacked against me, or seem nearly insurmountable, or, where I am finally beyond myself.