The Thing I Can’t Do

I got to thinking the other day that the things in my life that cause me the most stress are the things I can’t do. Waiting on other people’s response, a problem I can’t solve on my own, a task I’m not equipped to perform. If it is up to me I can do it or not do it and it really doesn’t bother me either way since I have the control. But when I don’t have control, when I too weak, too incompetent, too dependent, it bothers me since it emphasizes my weakness. I stress since I’m so helpless to do the thing I know needs doing.

I wonder if that is why the Scriptures tell us over and over again to trust in the saving power of Jesus. If there is anything we can’t do it is to save ourselves by ourselves. We are too sinful, too weak, too lacking. I can try to my utmost but I will always be lacking. Yet with the sacrifice of Christ, I can make it.

For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,

Romans 8:3

There is no more sad fate than try to overcome the mountain of sin and sliding back down again and again. This Sisyphean effort will bring a lifetime of misery outside of Christ. Yet in Christ, we have what we need to solve the problem we can’t solve on our own. He has given us everything we need (2^nd Peter 1:3) to live a life unburdened from what we can’t do and to live for what we know can.

Don’t live under the stress up incompleteness. Live in the joy of a salvation provided by God.

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