After the Storm
by Ken Painter
How often have you felt like you've been backed into a corner with few options or perhaps no way out of a situation, and you've said to yourself or your significant other, "Well, just do something?"
I just hate that, don't you? And we've all been there, perhaps too many times. But that feeling of entrapment can foment an amount of anxiety within us that leads to irrational decision making if we're not careful.
It's not that when faced with the proverbial fork-in-the-road choices in life, some of which produce angst levels sure to send our stomach acid levels over the top, we shouldn't shift our mode of thinking into high gear. No, it's just that in so doing, many of us don't handle the pressure well, and that's when we start showing how really human we are deep under our skin. And we fall prone sometimes to making less than wise decisions.
The trap can lie in our decision making processes. If the corner we've become backed into involves a momentous decision, but we go it alone in making such a choice or choices, the door we open is likely to be a poorer one. No one wants to get zonked through all the storms of life, and I've been there more than once. That happens when left to one's own sensibilities or rather
senselessness
. However, involving God in the decision making process through prayer, mediation, reading and studying, consultation with knowledgeable friends, whatever works best for one's own personal thought processes, any combination of these helps us to have the mind of Christ in realizing that God is still speaking to us and blessing us in our daily lives. This is practical wisdom.
I can personally attest to the power of involving God in the decision making process. The past couple of years has seen quite a liminal state of affairs for my husband and me due to our declining health concerns and our continuing unstable economics. Because of this we've exercised continuing prayer (Rom. 12-12) as well as dedicated thought and research as to what we should do to resolve our problem knowing that we couldn't continue living here in our current location without major wholesale changes. Sometimes God will answer prayers rather simply, not necessarily swiftly, but
simply
. For us it came in the form of a phone call, and, as such, in a few short months we'll be moving 1100 miles and one time zone away from the place we've called home for the past seven years and into a prepared in-law suite. God hears prayers and provides answers to anybody's storms of life if asked in faith and backed up with Christian works. Even the worst corner you can become backed into can have a door opened into another world if you consider listening for God.
