The Path to Peace: Experiencing God's Comfort When You're OverwhelmedSample

Peace When Life is Out of Control

All of us have found ourselves in situations where life feels completely out of our control. When our bodies break down, when our bank account runs dry, when our families fall apart, when someone we love is lost—in those times we realize, afresh, how little we have control over.

We see that we must wait on God to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

When we read about the life of Ruth, one thing we come to quickly see is that so much of Ruth’s life was completely out of her control. She was a foreigner in a foreign land, without power or prestige, at the mercy of Boaz and his workers for her daily bread. And when she followed Naomi’s advice to nudge Boaz into marriage, she found her life in the hands of her kinsman-redeemer.

Would Boaz redeem her and marry her? Or would the other relative—a man she did not know—redeem and marry her instead? Her life and future are now at a critical turning point—and Ruth has no power to make anything happen. All she can do is go home with Naomi and wait.

She is completely dependent upon others.

She is completely dependent upon the Lord.

I can guess that as Ruth waited, she felt the same things we do: uncertainty, fear, anxiety, even hope. Can you picture her pacing the dirt floor of Naomi’s home, wringing her hands and praying for God to make his will clear? What was God’s plan for her life? Would Boaz redeem her? How would it all play out? She had no way to control it, no way of guiding the outcome. She simply had to wait.

Have you had seasons of waiting too? I have had so many times where I have felt the gravity of an outcome that was completely out of my hands. Waiting on a call back from a job opportunity. Waiting for a spouse. Waiting on a diagnosis. Waiting on a pregnancy test. I’ve asked so many questions in the waiting: Was this God’s plan, or had I missed it? Would we have the provision that we needed, or would everything fall through? How would everything play out?

I had to wait.

And yet, in the waiting times of our lives, when every decision and action is out of our hands, there is a gift lingering for us: the opportunity to commune with Christ more deeply. When we are desperate for him to move on our behalf, we see that we are never truly in control, although most of us lean on the illusion that we are.

Waiting on God can be a place of great peace if we turn our attentions away from whatever we are waiting for—the diagnosis, the job, the relationship, the healing—and turn toward the One who is in total control and holds everything in his hands.

The Lord, who is unchanging, is just as good and faithful in our waiting as he is when our lives seem to be sailing along smoothly. Because “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), our souls can be at rest in him, no matter how little we have control over.