Christian Living

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Stop Moving

While riding in the car the other day, I listened to my daughter speak to my 1 year old grand-daughter and had this epiphany. We are much like babies when it comes to our relationship with God. Let me explain what happened and it this will make more sense.

My grand-daughter has a toy that has a ring large enough to get her arm into. It is meant to be used to hang the toy from something so the baby can play with it. Mya, my grand-daughter, insisted on sticking her arm through the toy, subsequently getting her arm stuck in it. When she was unable to remove her arm she would start screaming in frustration and anger.

As I explained earlier, we were in the car; therefore, she was strapped into her car seat for safety. This protective limited mobility made it more difficult for her to remove the ring thus escalating her irritation.

My daughter reached back to help her and said, “Stop moving so I can help you. You are only making it worse by not being still.” which sparked the following realization.

I immediately saw the correlation between us and God and the situation Mya had gotten herself into. We are much the same way when it comes to our lives. We get ourselves stuck in something by our own actions, and then God reaches out to help us, but is unable because we won’t stop moving and subsequently make things worse. We keep trying to fix the situation ourselves and get ourselves in even deeper and deeper. We then cry out to the Father in frustration and anger because we cannot get ourselves out.

The “ring” attached to our situation is stuck on the arm of our lives. God has us in a protective place, much like the car seat, so our movements are limited, but if we weren’t in this place we would be at great risk since we are traveling at high speed through life. He reaches out to help us, but we will not quit moving, trying to extricate ourselves from the ring of our circumstances. Until, he says to us “Stop moving so I can help you, you’re only making it worse by not being still.” The bible says for us to be still and know that I am God. We need to be still and let Him handle the ring and remove it from us. Allow Him to get us “unstuck”.

But, that’s not the end of it. After, my daughter removed Mya’s arm from the ring within moments she was howling in frustration again. Why, because she had once again stuck her arm right back into the ring of the toy. Bam, it hit me again, how many times have I done this? God, removed my position of being stuck in the situation and I turn around and put myself right back in it again.

My daughter reached back and removed the ring again, only to have Mya stick her arm right back in it again. Finally, my daughter told her “Get your arm out and stop putting it in there.”

Wow, once again I saw the correlation between our lives and our relationship with God. This is what He will do as well. As long as we keep putting ourselves right back into the situation, eventually He will say pull yourself out of there, I have shown you how and stop putting yourself back there. Now, let me clarify. He doesn’t tell us to throw the toy away, He tells us to interact with it differently so we don’t get stuck.

Maybe it’s our job, our family, our kids, or our marriages. He is not telling us to toss that relationship, what He says is to do it differently. Stop doing the things that get you stuck in that relationship. Many parents would have just taken the toy from Mya and not let her play with it. But, that is not the answer. God never gives us license to give up on what He has given us. And yes, the things in our lives are what God has given us not what we have given ourselves. Our husbands, wives, kids, mothers, fathers, siblings, assorted other family members, friends, employers, finances, homes and all other material things are all gifts from the Lord and we must learn how to “play” with them appropriately in a way that consummates His purpose for bringing those people and things into our lives. We cannot continue to do things the same way with the gift if we get stuck. He is faithful to remove us from the place where we are stuck and tells us to interact with it the way that He meant for us to.

You see, once Mya realized that sticking her arm through the ring was not the way that the toy was meant to be played with, she sat back and had a really good time with it. We are to do the same, instead of insisting on doing things our way, behaving in the relationships we have been blessed with in a way that was not meant for us to behave. He does not give us the freedom to just toss what He has given us either. He wants us to learn how to respect it and utilize it properly. For example, many people today see divorce as the answer to their marital woes because they believe they are “stuck”, not taking the time to see how they are not properly behaving within the relationship. God will remove their arm from the ring for a season to show them how to do it correctly, but He does not allow for them to throw it away.

Romans 7:2 – 3 uses marriage as an example of how the law has power over us only as long as we are alive, but the rule is no less in force today than it was when Paul wrote it. It says, “For (instance) a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies, she is loosed and discharged from the law concerning her husband. Accordingly, she will be held an adulteress if she unites herself to another man while her husband lives. But, if he dies, the marriage is no longer binding o n her (she is free from that law); and if she unites herself to another man, she is not an adulteress.”

The purpose I am using this scripture for is to show, that what God gives us we do not have the “right” to throw away. In fact, Jesus said that except for (unrepented*) adultery, divorce is not permissible in God’s eyes. I use this as an example because divorce is high in the United States, a supposedly Christian country. How would the divorce rate drop, if people took their Christianity seriously and truly saw their spouses and their marriages as gifts from God? Would we be so quick to throw away what He has given us if we stopped long enough to see the gifts for what they truly are, and learned how to “play” with them according to how He directs and not our own selfishly, rationalized mindsets and ideals? This should be applied to every aspect of our lives, not just our marriages though.

The only way to remove our arms from that ring and see how we are using the gift improperly is to be still and let God help us. And once he has extracted us from our place of being stuck, use the gift the way He designed us to use it, and we will not get stuck again. In fact, not only will we not get stuck, we will actually enjoy engaging ourselves with it.

Just something to think about.


*(“Unrepented” is my addition. God repeatedly likens our relationship to Him with being married and all acts of sin are like committing adultery in our marriage to him. But, when we repent it is forgiven and the sinful act is removed from us. Remember the woman caught in adultery? Jesus did not tell her she was no longer married to her husband because of her acts, he told her to go and sin no more.)

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