Feeling Stuck In The Mud?
He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.
Psalm 40:2
Right in the middle of summer during the pandemic, I was playing golf one hot and muggy afternoon with my son and his friend. It was the one place we felt like we could go and be safe from Covid-19. We could go enjoy nature, get some exercise, and not come in contact with anyone we didn’t want to. I felt like it was a safe place. I love playing golf, so I was looking forward to getting in 9 holes of worry free fun. We get to the second hole and there is what looks like a dry creek bed running through the middle of the fairway. My son’s friend hit his ball into this creek bed and refused to even try to get his ball. Well, I am that person playing golf that hates to lose a ball, so I told him I would get it for him. I step onto what I thought was a dry creek bed that turned out to be only dry on top and a mud pit underneath. My leg got sucked into mud like I was stepping into quicksand. I screamed as if the mud monster had captured me and was taking me down into the depths of the pit. All I could feel was my leg enveloped in a gooey, cold mess. I pictured all kinds of crawling and slithering creatures coming straight for my leg. The boys said I screamed like a man, I’m still not sure how to take that. I literally had to pull my leg out of the mud with both hands. I stepped up onto dry ground and the boys just looked at me like I had lost my mind. They of course thought it was the funniest thing they had seen all summer.
What I thought was a safe place turned out to be a place full of hazards. How often do you feel like that in your surrounding environment? We feel like we have everything under control. Our house is so clean we could eat off the floor, our kids schedule’s are planned to the minute, we have meals planned out for the entire week, and work couldn’t go any better. Then all of a sudden we are hit with something that is totally unexpected. Maybe a pipe bursts in our house and floods it, maybe we have a car accident out of nowhere, maybe we get laid off from work, maybe we get a bad health diagnosis, or maybe our world comes to a halt from a pandemic. There is so much that can turn our dry ground into mud.
Psalm 40:2 does not say we will not have mud and mire in our lives. It says God will bring us out of the mud and mire and place our feet on a rock, a firm place to stand. We will all be surprised with unpleasant and unplanned circumstances in our lives. How do we handle those circumstances?
In the story of Jesus healing the blind man in John 9:6, Jesus made mud with his saliva and placed it on the man’s eyes to heal him. Jesus performed a miracle with mud. Are you getting what I’m saying here?
We feel like we’re stuck, we’re being pulled down by the quicksand in our lives. That is a scary place to be. We have lost all control; we are full of worry and fear. When we finally realize we can’t get out of it alone and look to God to help us, He pulls us up and places us firmly on His lap. When we fully rely on Him instead of ourselves, we finally see the beauty that comes out of our pit of mud.
Ok, I have gone over and over in my mind how to make this deeper so that I may give us some new perspective on this. But, I realized we don’t need a new perspective on this; we simply need to take this seriously, to look deep into ourselves.
So many times we ask God where He is. We don’t see Him in the midst of our circumstances. It is because we really aren’t looking for Him. We are too busy searching for a way to pull ourselves out of our circumstances. We try to do it all without God’s help. At least I know that is how it is for me.
God is never surprised by circumstances in our lives. He is always fully prepared. There is never that look of shock or disbelief on His face the way there is on ours. He never has to text His friend and say, “You won’t believe what just happened.” If we keep our eyes focused on Him, He will equip us to handle those unplanned circumstances. Imagine life if we knew how to handle these things before they even happened. A close relationship with God gives us the confidence to handle these times of uncertainty.
Back to my muddy golf experience. There happened to be a bathroom about 3 holes from us, so I went into the bathroom and washed myself off. God provided me with a way to pick myself up and wash away the evidence of the mud. Our mud may not be forgotten but we can always be washed clean.
What has been your mud pit lately?
Do you have trouble giving your circumstances to God because you like to be in control? Explain why you feel this way.
Name at least one way you can change your thinking and look to God to equip you to handle your circumstances.
