“Two Many Cooks in the Kitchen”

God is the Holy One, Sovereign One, Almighty One, and All-Powerful One.  He is the ultimate one man show.  He doesn’t need our help to do anything.  The only thing that He asks of us, really what He requires of us, is to trust Him.

Think of a boss that micromanages.  They give you an assignment, but the entire time you are working on it, they are standing over your shoulder constantly correcting you every time they think you are about to make a mistake.  Eventually they start doing the task themselves in fear that you won’t do it the way they want it done when they want it done.  If you’ve ever been in that situation, you know it can be very frustrating.  You told them that you would do it and you have never given your boss a reason to doubt your abilities before.  You even had several ways to make the assignment better.  But because they took over you weren’t given the room to work like you wanted to.  So why do we sometimes try to micromanage God? 

Isaiah 55:8-11 says, “⁸ “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD. ⁹ “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. ¹⁰ “ For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, ¹¹ So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”

In other words, God is saying, “I don’t think the way you think. The way you work isn’t the way I work. Let me do this my way.  I can do it better and if I said it, not only is going to happen, but its going to prosper.”  He can bless you today and make it last until tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day and the next day going into years to come.  He can bless you and at the same time bless your mother, your father, your sister, your brother, the person sitting next to you, the person sitting behind you, the person in front of you, and even your server when you go out to eat after church.  So instead of trying to micromanage God and do His job for Him, we need to get out of the way so that His word can prosper through us.

When you try to help God out, you can make things worse for yourself. Look at Sarah, Abraham’s wife.  In the 15^th chapter of Genesis, God promised Abraham a son.  But by the time the 16^th chapter came around, Sarah still hadn’t become pregnant.  I don’t know if it was because she didn’t believe God or if she didn’t fully understand His plan, but either way she decided to take matters into her own hands.  This shows why it is important to have a strong relationship with God.  Because when you do, you will trust Him unconditionally and through prayer and reading your Word, you will be confident in knowing the plans He has for your life and your actions and desires will reflect that.

We have to be careful that when we don’t see God working the way we think He should, not to think that we have a better idea of how to get the job done.  We have to be careful not to be so full of ourselves and our own abilities. 1 Corinthians 1:27-29 says, “²⁷ But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; ²⁸ and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, ²⁹ that no flesh should glory in His presence.”  We can’t let appearances fool us.  God can take the things that are nothing and turn them into something.  Just because circumstances and situations don’t look the way the way you want them to or how you think they should look, doesn’t mean God can’t use them to accomplish His plan.  He can take nothing and make more out of it than you can with the something you think you have.  We have to learn to put our trust in Him and not in ourselves and other people.  His plan is always going to be better than anything our human minds can come up with.