Trusting God When You Stink At _______

What do you stink at? You can fill it in the title. I stink at unlimited things: ping pong, math, juggling, minimizing, knitting, keeping my desk clean, and the list goes on.

I was counseling one of my teenage daughters tonight who was dealing with her great disgust of math. It isn't really math she is disgusted at. It is really that math is H.A.R.D.  At least for her it is.  If you look at my Stink List above you might realize that this is unfortunately a genetic tendency.

As I was giving the mother speech about trying hard, and applying yourself, and working, working, working I suddenly found myself  changing course and saying, "God made you with this weakness. He didn't make a mistake when He allowed math to be hard for you. And He didn't make a mistake when He put you in this math class. You need to trust Him with this hard thing."

Sometimes I think God uses my own mouth to shake me up. Am I trusting Him with what He has allowed me to stink at? Am I trusting Him with where He has me? My "class"?

Okay, so the short answer is no. No, I haven't. Instead I have sort of been thinking that God must have made a mistake to allow this hard thing in my life.

Why would He want me to be in a place where I struggle? There are always the answers of "because He wants me to see my need of Him" and "so He can get the glory." And those are good answers but I really don't know if that is why. And it honestly doesn't matter why.

What I KNOW is that I am where He has me. I know I stink at what I stink at. I know that God let me stink at it, and God let me be in a place where that shows up, and He is perfectly okay with that.

So I should be too. If I trust Him, I can trust Him with everything. E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.

Even the stinky stuff. Because somehow not only does He take my ashes (Isaiah 61:3), He takes my everything (my E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G) (Ecc. 3:11) and makes it beautiful.