If there is one thing that proves that all men and women are created equal, it is the issue of problems. We all have them. They come to us regardless of who we are, what station of life we occupy, what we own, what we control, how much we’ve been educated, or who’s on our family tree.
The problem with having problems is failing to see the purpose. If I’ve learned anything in my life with God, it’s that God does nothing without a reason.
I’ve discovered in all phases of my life – private, personal, professional – that God uses problems for at least these five reasons.
- God uses problems to stop me. Oftentimes the problem is to stop me from going down the wrong road, to stop me from getting settled deeply into self-destructive behavior; behavior that not only hurts me and the people around me, but the God who created me and has redeemed me.
- God uses problems to inspect me. By that I mean problems become like mirrors, often showing us how inadequate our training, or our strength might be. It allows us to know where we are.
- God uses problems to protect me. Oftentimes a closed door or the end of the road is more protection than correction.
- God uses problems to perfect me. Let’s be honest, it’s the bumps in life that allow you to start climbing. Given our own devices, most of us seek comfort in taking the easy road. Yet this is not what God has planned for any of us. So problems are ways to make us uncomfortable; to get us out of the comfort zone into the crisis zone where the action is really happening.
- God uses problems to promote me. In the movie, “Alice in Wonderland,” one of the key moments, White Queen says that in the moment of crisis a hero must step forth. In that story it was Alice. In your story, where is the crisis, the problem, the wrong that needs to be righted, the load that needs to be lifted, or the injustice that needs to be corrected for which you need to step forward and be the hero? Without problems and the ability to win over them, there would be no higher level to which each of us desires to ascend.
Remember, the more you become, the more problems you will likely attract. If you think for one minute you can avoid problems by successfully maneuvering the ones you have now, you are kidding yourself. You, like everyone else on the planet are in one of three places: either going into a crisis, in a crisis, or coming out of one, all of which God has a purpose for if you’re willing to embrace it.