I love simple things, things that are efficient, streamlined, to-the-point. I love directions that are clear and concise, and writing that is so straightforward, it’s breath-taking.

But lately I’ve been wanting that too much. I’ve been aiming for a simplicity that isn’t realistic, especially in my writing. Sometimes I wish I could write a post that says if you do steps 1, 2, and 3, your problem will be solved.  But life is not simple. It doesn’t work out into a neat little package most of the time (any of the time?).

Some Christian books and articles that I’ve read actually lay it out that way. If you just pray this much, if you just trust this much, if you just give this much, then this and that will happen in your life. We’d all like it to be that easy, but it just isn’t.

There’s a very simple reason for this: we are not God. As much as I like to think I’m in control of my universe, I’m not. As much as I like to plan for the future, I can’t see it. As much as I check items off my to-do list, the results aren’t guaranteed. Sometimes this makes me very angry or frustrated or downright sad because life is full of so many questions and really hard situations. I’d love to find a way out of them myself.

But.

I find that when I’m pushed up against a wall, I realize how fully I’m unable to get out a situation by myself. I realize that I need help. These situations drive me to God, which is perhaps why he allows them into my life in the first place.

Life is full of problems and unknowns. I can’t change that, and Jesus told me it would be this way because this world is broken. Broken until the end of time. Daily struggles, hardships, burdens…they remind me of that this world is not my home. It’s a difficult, painful reality, but it is the truth that drives me to my God.

My God is wise and powerful. My God is all-knowing and all-seeing. My God can move the mountains and part the seas. He can change all of the things that I can’t. In fact, he’s changed everything I really need to have changed. He sent Jesus to conquer this world, to destroy death, and to defeat the devil. He changed me from a child of this world to a child of God. This world isn’t my everything. Heaven is, and it’s already been won for me.

I find myself so bent on trying to change things here, so afraid of what I can’t control. I focus so very much of my energy and time on my burdens, that sometimes I don’t focus anything on my blessings. I bring myself back again and again to these verses from Philippians 3:

“What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in^[a] Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. ¹⁰ I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

¹² Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. ¹³ Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

I don’t need steps 1, 2, and 3. I need a change of perspective, a change of heart. This kind of change is what the truths of God’s Word bring. In His Word, God assures us that that he is indeed God, that our salvation is won, and that He working all things out according to his grace-infused plan. When I focus my attention on these truths, I find that everything becomes so much simpler than following steps 1, 2, and 3.

Press on!