Wrestling with God

In the summer of 1846, a party of 89 emigrants headed west along the 2,170-mile-long Oregon Trail. Tired, hungry, and trailing behind schedule, they decided at Fort Bridger, Wyoming to travel to their final destination in California by shortcut. The “Hastings Cutoff” they chose was an alternative route that its namesake, Lansford Hastings, claimed would shave at least 300 miles off the journey. The party believed this detour could save more than a month’s time. They were wrong.

Hastings Cutoff turned out to be a waterless, wide-open stretch of the Great Salt Lake Desert, that Hastings himself had never traveled. He simply looked at a map of the route that settler John C. Fremont had taken in 1845 across the Great Salt Lake Desert. Hastings then wrote a guidebook which said it would be quicker and easier than the standard trail. What Hastings didn’t realize was that Fremont almost died doing it.

By the time the Donner-Reed party finally reached the Sierra Nevada mountains, the shortcut had cost them weeks. Snow fell, trapping the travelers. This is when the most infamous (and deadly) part of their tale began. When members of the party began starving to death, survivors ate their remains to stay alive.

Shortcuts, supposedly easier ways of doing something, have often produced disastrous results. BLM Administrator Rob Sweeten said, “It’s obvious that [the emigrants] were in need of shorter routes to save time and money. Especially when you figure, they’re traveling 15 miles a day and facing challenges like changing weather and river conditions, and conflicts with Native Americans. Such difficulties often led to them attempting to find an easier route, shorter route. Though, in many cases, the new route turned out to be much harder.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Satan offered Jesus a disastrous shortcut that avoided the Cross (Matt. 4:1-10). We are also tempted in the same way to find the easy way to growth, status, or achievement. But God uses time, effort, and hardship in our lives to produce fully mature believers who are “conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29).

In 2014, Steve Stamkos was looking forward to representing his country at the Sochi Olympic games. Sports analysts reported the importance of his role, so all of Canada was counting on him too. Everyone was concerned when Stamkos had fractured his right tibia in November of the previous year.

Doctors inserted a titanium rod to promote healing and stability. And as the date for the games approached, sports analysts reported that physical therapists had instituted a targeted regiment to speed up the healing. But by early February it became clear, Stamkos would not be ready in time.

In a statement Stamkos said: "(This) is obviously very disappointing for me. I honestly believe we did everything possible in order to have my injured leg ready in time for the Olympics, but I realize you can't force healing."

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sometimes, despite our best prayers, our best efforts, healing does not come. God has other plans. You can’t force the healing; you can't force the healer.

An enterprising soccer fan made heads turn when he found a way to circumvent the rules preventing him from enjoying his favorite team.

Ali Demirkaya, nicknamed "Yamuk Ali" (or "Crazy Ali") is well known in his area for his passionate fandom of the local football club, Denizlispor. So ardent was his fandom that Ali had been banned from the stadium for a year, due to a misdemeanor from a previous fan-related incident. So on the day of an important match against a rival team, Ali found a solution—he rented a crane, then lifted it high enough to see over the stadium wall.

"That match was very important for our team," he explained to local news source Yeni Asir. "I had to go to the police station to sign a paper to show that I am not watching the match in the stadium. Then I quickly went to rent the crane." Social media in the area was full of pictures of a jubilant Ali cheering from his perch.

Ultimately, police were summoned and Ali was forced to lower the crane. Nevertheless, he still ended the day on a high note. The stunt only cost him the equivalent of $86, he wasn't cited or fined by the authorities, and his team won 5-0.

Potential Preaching Angles: If it means something to you, you'll get creative to make sure you don't miss out. Sometimes God's blessing comes to those willing to go to extremes.

Dan McConchie, vice president of government affairs at Americans United for Life, was riding his motorcycle through a suburban intersection when a car came into his lane and pushed him into on-coming traffic. When he woke two weeks later in a Level 1 trauma center, he was a mess. Six broken ribs, deflated left lung, broken clavicle, broken shoulder blade, and five broken vertebrae. Worst of all, amidst all the broken bones, he had a spinal-cord injury that left him a paraplegic. The neurosurgeon told his wife that it would be a "miracle" if he'd ever walk again.

Eight years later Dan is still in a wheelchair.

"What I learned," Dan said, "is that this life isn't for our comfort. Instead, the purpose of this life is that we become conformed to the image of Christ. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen when everything is unicorns and rainbows. It instead happens when life is tough, when we are forced to rely upon God through prayer just to make it through the day. That is when he is most at work in our lives molding us into who he designed us to be."

"My prayers are different today than they were eight years ago. Back then, I looked at God like Santa Claus. I asked him to send nice things my way. Now, I have one prayer that I pray more than any other: 'Lord, may I be able to say at the end of today that I was faithful.'"

Singer-songwriter and author Jennifer Rothschild shares her story in Decision magazine:

As a little girl, I was captivated by colors. I loved to get the biggest box possible and read the titles of each crayon. I would study the differences between garnet, scarlet, maroon, and burgundy. My dream was to be a commercial artist. I remember taking a crisp white paper from my dad's office, and with a black felt-tip pen, learning to draw caricatures.

When I was about 12, I began to have some difficulties with my sight, but they were subtle and I didn't immediately associate the struggles with vision problems. As my junior-high years unfolded, things that most students in my grade could do so easily—like opening the combination locks on their lockers, reading from the chalkboard, or catching a ball on the softball field—were becoming really hard for me.

I remember sitting in class and feeling a wave of anxiety when the final bell rang because I had to navigate the crowded hallways. I would constantly run into students, and that was so embarrassing. I couldn't understand what was happening; no one else seemed so clumsy! It took me forever to realize it was because I couldn't see the students, and my classmates could see much better than I.

I'll never forget the night my mom and I were visiting a friend who lived in an upstairs apartment. I was probably 13 or 14, and as we were walking up in the dark, I was stumbling. My mom asked, "Jennifer, can't you see the stairs?" I asked her with just as much curiosity, "What do you mean? Can you see the stairs?"

By ninth grade, my eyesight had worsened. The glasses I had worn since I was a little girl were no longer compensating for my sight loss. After several visits to the eye doctor, he told my parents and me that there was something wrong and recommended we go to an eye hospital. I had no idea what I was about to discover.

At the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami, the doctors told us that I had retinitis pigmentosa, which essentially meant my retinas were deteriorating. The prognosis was total blindness. I don't remember the exact words that were used that day, but I do remember the word "blindness," because that's not a word I expected to hear. My parents and I had the same response: silence. We knew something was wrong with my eyes, but even so, we were shocked.

In the silence of that difficult ride home from the hospital, my mind was racing. I thought, I'm not going to be able to drive a car. I'm not going to be able to be an artist. I remember the disappointment of that. And I questioned, Are boys going to want to date me? How am I going to finish high school? Will I be able to go off to college? Sitting in the back seat of our family car, I felt my fingertips and wondered if I would have to read Braille someday.

Finally, we arrived home. I went straight to my old upright piano in the living room, and the silence of the hospital and the ride home was broken as I began to play. I had taken a few years of piano lessons and could sight-read in simple keys. But on this day I could no longer see the sheet music. Instead, I played by ear for the very first time. The song that filled my living room that day—the song that fills my heart to this day—was that beloved hymn "It Is Well with My Soul."

It was a miracle that on that very dark day, God gave me hope and light through the gift of playing by ear. But the greatest miracle wasn't that I played "It Is Well with My Soul;" the greatest miracle was that, because I was a Christian, it really was well with my soul. With such a concise statement, God gave new color to my life. Blindness has remained with me; it's still not well with my circumstance, but God has made it well with my soul.

One of the hardest lessons I've had to learn is that God uses painful circumstances in our lives for good. My hero, Joni Eareckson Tada, who has been in a wheelchair since she was a teenager, makes this point well when she says that God allows what he hates in order to accomplish what he loves. I know that God's heart is broken when he sees our hearts break. I believe that just as Jesus wept at Lazarus' tomb, Jesus weeps when he sees us cry tears of loss. I'm convinced that God is well acquainted with the sorrow and struggles that I experience. Yet, at the same time, he loves me enough—and this is why I'm so loyal to him—to let me encounter sorrow, taste bitter emotions, and feel loss. He trusts me to be a good steward of that sorrow. He loves me enough to let me experience that pain so that he can accomplish something he loves—which for me has been a deeper character and a more eternal perspective.

I am convinced that God's grace has sustained me. If healing were sufficient, God would have provided it. If deliverance were sufficient, God would have delivered me. But he's allowed me to live with blindness, yet live equally with the sufficiency of his grace, and that grace shows up in different ways on different days. But in whatever way it shows up, it has always been truly sufficient. It may never be well with our circumstances, but through God's grace, it can always be well with our souls.

This article was adapted from Decision magazine, May 2007; ©2007 Billy Graham Evangelistic Association; used by permission, all rights reserved.

Rudy is the true story of a young overachiever (played by Sean Astin) and his tenacious pursuit of his dream to attend the University of Notre Dame and play football for the Fighting Irish. However, the road leading to his goal was filled with obstacles.

First, because he was small and had barely average speed, there was little chance he would be able to make the Irish's football squad as a walk-on. Second, Rudy was dyslexic, and his high school grades had suffered as a consequence. It would be almost impossible for him to be accepted by the prestigious university in the first place.

Refusing to give up, he took a Greyhound into South Bend and met Father Cavanaugh, a scholastic priest who agreed to get him into a semester of Holy Cross Junior College. If his grades were good enough there, perhaps Notre Dame might consider letting him in.

In the following scene, Rudy's grades have improved dramatically. But three semesters and three rejection letters later, he is devastated and hopeless. His next semester is his last chance, because Notre Dame never allows seniors to transfer. He has managed his way to South Bend, labored in class, and even scraped up enough odd jobs so he can eat. He has been diligent and worked every angle he knew. But it hasn't been enough. Rudy finds himself in the chapel where he had first met Father Cavanaugh. And once again, he pours out his soul to the elderly priest.

"Maybe I haven't prayed enough," Rudy says, almost frantic.

Father Cavanaugh answers with kind, narrow eyes, "I'm sure that's not the problem. Praying is something we do in our time. The answers come in God's time."

Rudy isn't satisfied. There has to be something else he can do. "Have I done everything I possibly can? Can you help me?"

Father Cavanaugh's answer is measured but sure. "Son, in 35 years of religious studies, I've come up with only two hard, incontrovertible facts: There is a God, and I'm not Him."

Elapsed Time: DVD track 17, 01:02:47 – 01:03:41

Jonathan Lunde, instructor at Trinity College in Deerfield, Illinois, writes:

This past semester, I was privileged to have working with me as an assistant one of our graduates from the biblical studies program at Trinity College. She had gone on to graduate school but had decided to take a year off to take stock of where she was at and where she was going. This student had been one who had wrestled deeply with issues of truth and faith while she was attending Trinity and after she graduated. We had had numerous discussions about these issues, and for a time I was not certain her evangelical faith would survive.

But this past semester, as we sat in my office discussing her journey, I rejoiced to perceive the gentle work of the Spirit in bringing her to a much more stable place. On one such occasion, I asked her what it was that had been most helpful in bringing her through to that place. Her answer surprised me. It was not some profound insight that she had been given along the way; it was not some new answer that had quieted the ranting of her heart. Rather, she said, "It was people." I asked her what she meant by that, and she explained that what helped her the most was being able to look at people whose intellectual lives were far in advance of hers, who had wrestled deeply with the same issues with which she was wrestling, but who were still people of vital, Christian faith.