The things we put in chains

Life is filled with challenges. Some of those are handed to us without our even knowing it. Others we knowingly pick up.

As I walk with God longer, I realize that the stuff that happens in my life is rarely the place I struggle. It is what I do with the stuff that happens that is the issue. I guess it is all about perspective. I can see a $25 check as a curse because I was hoping for $500, or I can see it as a blessing because I wasn't expecting it at all. It isn't the stuff, it is what we do with the stuff.

I wonder how many of life's problems exist because we put them in chains. What I mean by that is that we bind up the stuff of life - we decide if something is possible or impossible. We are the ones who see a situation as hopeless or hopeful. We throw the chains on whatever is happening, and never let it sit in the lap of God. We lock together the padlock of self sufficiency and determine the future, not by our faith, but by our fear.

"The things we put in chains" - what if we weren't doing that? What if we took the adversities of life and just took them, without the chains. What might God do with what we left set free? That issue or problem might fly away sooner than we could ever have imagined if we would have left it without the burden of our earthly perspective, our narrow judgment, and our fleshly fear.

Will there ever be an end to the lessons yet to learn?