Internet Cafe: Analytically Overweight

I get overwhelmed sometimes with all that God teaches me through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit uses relationships, memories and situations to show me spiritual truths. Many times, though, I feel like I can’t keep up. I analyze my experience, pull out the truth and then try to digest the surrounding situation. I’m still trying to understand stuff from years past, but I’m realizing that I’ll never fully be able to stack all of my life experiences in neat, organized rows into my subconscious.

A couple of days ago, I found myself pulling a spiritual truth from a relationship. I understood what God was teaching me, and I appreciated the insight that I had been given; however, I still couldn’t wrap my brain around the situation, and to be honest, I didn’t want to think about it anymore. I started to see that there was no end to my spiraling condition of over-thinking, and I was upset at God for making spiritual insight so grueling to gather.

I told God, “If you want me to analyze everything I encounter in this life, I’m going to be thinking a very long time.” I truly feared that the joy and peace I’ve finally found in Christ would be squeezed out by my constant desire to gain understanding and grow in wisdom.

God told me, “Take the seed; toss the rest.”

Right then, I had an image of me pulling out spiritual truths from every direction and tossing the rest of the circumstance out the window. God uses our life experiences to grow us, but He doesn’t expect us to understand it all. In fact, I pictured myself being analytically overweight from thinking so much about everything, and spiritually inactive because I was too busy digesting it all. How could I possibly be an effective witness for Christ if I was constantly trying to organize and spiritualize every aspect of my life?

God does use our circumstances to teach us, but He never said that we would understand all the ins and outs of our lives on this world. People bump into each other every day, and there is no telling why things happen as they do. All we can do is look for the spiritual insight that God wants us to gain and toss the rest at the foot of the cross.

Life is too short to try to eat and digest every twist and turn of our journey. God wants us to gain understanding and grow in wisdom, but He also wants us to enjoy life, keep our eyes focused on Him and our feet moving toward heaven. From now on, I’m determined to look for a seed of understanding or a gem of wisdom, and let God deal with the rest.

Questions: Is there a situation that you have been over analyzing? What does God want you to learn, and what does He want you to leave at the cross?

“Blessed are those who find wisdom, those who gain understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold” (Proverbs 3.13-14 NIV).

You can also read this at the Internet Cafe!