Today's Devotional

 

 December 8, 2008

                                                                                                                        

Subject:  While It's Still Broken 

2 Corinthians 12:8 - "For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me." 

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I'm currently undergoing hardware and software issues with my computer at home.  I started out about a month ago, trouble-shooting, doing diagnostic checks and the like and I still don't have the machine fixed.  Last evening, after spending a couple of hours in the upstairs computer room, now with the pieces of it strewn across the floor like a jigsaw puzzle, I came downstairs and told the wife, "well I didn't fix it, but I'm a whole lot smarter."  

I think that's why sometimes "breaks" things in our lives.  He's eagerly trying to see if we can learn anything about Him and learn it while the thing is still "broken."  See when things "break" in our lives, a marriage gone wrong, bills that can't be paid, the death of a loved one or anything else, we do what Paul did.  We often simply pray for the "break" to end and for the pain to stop.  However, what if it doesn't get fixed right away?  What if it stays "broken" longer than you expected, as it often does?  

One of my favorite rappers says, "Lord it may get better but it may not, so when I pray God I pray I will trust you whether or not the pain stops..."  That's what God wants.  He doesn't just send us through experiences to say that we've experienced this thing or that.  It's so that we get "smarter."

Today, God simply wants us to see Him more, to know Him more, to get smarter about Him so that we can similarly exclaim as I did about the computer problem, "it's not fixed but I know Him more."        

Carlen