When We Need God to Untangle Our Messes
As the mother of three girls, I’ve dealt with some serious tangles in my lifetime. Between long hair and delicate necklaces, knots are inevitable. A kink forms, and all of a sudden, it’s a tangled mess!
Sometimes we catch tangles early enough to get them out ourselves. But when they get too complicated or they’re in a place we can’t get to or see to know what’s going on, we need outside help – someone who can see it better or has more patience or expertise.
Sometimes, tangles grow to the point where they have to be cut out. There’s no sorting it out one strand or loop at a time. It’s grown to the point where the host is ruined.
Inevitably with my girls, they come to me with their impossible messes: “Mommy, can you fix this?”
Sometimes it’s in the physical – hair, yarn, jewelry and the like – other times it’s the “messes” of life.
This is the picture the Lord brought to me this morning as I journaled my heart to Him. I’m all tangled up inside over a few things. I keep trying to figure them out, power past them or ignore them, hoping the kinks will work themselves out. But they’re not, and now I have tangles in my heart, emotions and thoughts!
I can’t get them out!
As many times as I go back to them and try to sort out the twists and turns and tangles, I just can’t seem to make progress. I can’t get to that victorious moment when the kink that started it all finally gives loose and releases the knot. Victory is won, and everything is right with the world again!
“Bring your tangled mess to Me, Shauna, and let me sort it out,” the Lord tenderly encouraged me this morning.
And something in me softened. Relaxed. Felt relieved. Like the moment when as a child you finally give up and go to your mom and dad to help you.
And so I went to my heavenly Father: “Can You please help me with this, Daddy? Here is my tangled mess. Will you sort it out so I can be free? It seems so impossible to me, Lord!”
And He spoke these words to me from His Word:
"Behold, (Shauna), I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me?”(Jeremiah 32:27, parentheses mine).
“No, Lord,” I answered. “There is nothing too hard for You. I just don’t believe. Help me to overcome my unbelief! Untangle my messes because I can’t even see to separate all that’s entangled in them.”
Immediately, His peace broke through my defenses. My attempts to fix myself. And He showed me truth: The kink at the root of my spiritual and emotional tangles is sin.
So I need to stay here, head bowed before His tender hands. I need to let Him sort things out and show me His truth, His perspective. I need His surgical and patient touch to pull apart the twists, turns and tangles so I can see my sin and repent. Only then will the knot in my gut and head loosen and disappear.
And the Lord asked me, “Do you trust Me? Do you really believe Me?”
When I can say “Yes! Yes, Lord, I believe!” the evidence will be in letting go. Letting go of self-reliance. Letting go of expectations and offenses. Letting go of pride and control. Letting go of my own understanding of what I think should happen or what I think will bring me happiness. Letting go of idols and idolatry. Letting go of what others do or don’t do.
When we let go, the strands begin to fall away. The tangles lose their hold. The knot unravels. The kink releases.
We are free.
Let’s take our tangled messes to the Lord. Nothing is too hard for Him, even the sin that entangles us. Let us do as Hebrews 12:1 says and “lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”
Do you have a mess in your life that you need untangled? Take it to the Lord. He is the master at tangles! He has the perfect touch, and His assurance to me this morning as I considered what looks so impossible in my eyes is His assurance to you, too:
It is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure
(Philippians 2:13)
He is at work in us according to His good pleasure. He will determine and delight to instigate and put forth the power for whatever is necessary in us to accomplish what is His pleasure. All we have to do is go to Him and yield our hearts and lives and thoughts and attitudes and all that entangles.
Our part is obedience.
He does the rest.