Be All You Can Be: A Challenge to Stretch Your God-Given Potential (16 page)

Y
OU CAN TELL IT
’
S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY
when you call Suicide Prevention, and they put you on hold. You can tell it’s going to be a bad day when you turn on the news and they’re showing emergency routes out of the state. You can tell it’s going to be a rotten day when your car horn goes off accidentally and remains stuck as you follow a group of Hell’s Angels on the freeway. Have you ever had a day like that? I think we all have. Yet as I work with and study people, I find that they do not all attack their problems in the same way. In fact, I meet people who have huge problems and yet seem to be just whistling along, making out fine; then I meet others who have relatively small problems and they’re devastated by them. I have concluded that your problem really is not your problem. Surface problems do not make or break us.

Let me give you some examples. I’ve done a lot of marriage counseling, and I’ve seen couples with incredibly large problems decide that they really want to live together and make their marriages work, and they go out and do it. I’ve had other couples whose problems appear very small. They’re a little bored, but they just need to make a few changes and their marriages could be revitalized. I’ve watched their marriages fall apart and end in divorce.

I’ve watched people who had incredible financial problems work their way out of trouble. I’ve watched other people with small financial problems sink, unable to handle the stress.

It is popular in our society to believe that we are victims of our situations. Society looks at a person and says, “That poor person was born on the wrong side of the tracks and doesn’t have a chance.” Society emphasizes the problem rather than the person. That’s a major mistake. Your problem is not your problem. If you can get the person right, the problem will be fine.

In one of our Sunday night baptism services, a fellow walked into the baptistry and shared a testimony the like of which I had never heard. When this guy was fourteen, his sister died. Two years later, his father was killed. His first two marriages ended in divorce. His oldest daughter died of cancer at the time of his second divorce. Last year, his brother was killed during a robbery at his place of business. Grief piled on top of grief caused this man to renew a bad relationship with drugs and alcohol, which caused his third marriage to fall apart. For a guy in his early thirties, he had known a lot of tragedy. And yet at the end he talked about how God had changed his life and given him a bright outlook. There was a smile on his face, he was confident in God. His focus had shifted from his problems to God’s promises. Your problem is not your problem

We respond to problems based on two things. We respond to problems based on what we see and what we seek. What we see is determined by our perspective in life and our level of discernment. What we seek is our desires, our values, and our purpose. Before we can understand and tackle problems effectively, we must identify what we see and what we seek. If I can see the problem but lack the desire to solve it, I’ll begin to observe problems as they are, but I’ll never solve them. To flip that coin, if I desire very much to take care of my problems but don’t see them in the right light, I will never be as effective as I could be.

The apostle Paul viewed problems accurately. In 2 Corinthians, Paul writes about how we are handicapped on all sides.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed. (2 Cor. 4:8–9)

Paul had been through shipwrecks, beatings, humiliation, and imprisonment, but he saw that the difficulties he was experiencing were very small in comparison with the glory of God (see Rom. 8:18). Paul overcame his problems because he saw them in the right light.

So often we take a little speck of a problem and make it a huge barrier in our lives. That’s usually because we see the problem in the wrong light. We don’t see it in the light of God’s glory.

One day, little Bobby’s father came into the front room and saw the boy looking out on the street through the big end of a telescope. He said, “Son, that’s not the way you look through a telescope. If you look through it that way, you make the objects look much smaller. A telescope is to make things look bigger.” But Bobby smiled and said, “Daddy, the bully who’s always beating me up is out on the street. I turned the telescope around because he’s my main problem, and I want to see him smaller than he really is.” Most of us, instead of taking the big end of the telescope and reducing our problems, take the small end of the telescope and magnify our problems so that they look much bigger than they really are.

We see our problems based on three things: past experiences, present environment, and personal evaluation. Let’s start with past experiences. How we have handled problems in the past will greatly influence how we view them today. A sculptor begins his work with a chunk of granite, a mallet, and a chisel. The novice expects a chip of the rock to fall every time he hits the chisel with his mallet, but often nothing happens. After a while he lays down his mallet and chisel, too discouraged to go on. Why? Because every time he strikes the chisel he expects to see a tangible result. The professional working by his side has been doing it for years. He patiently takes that mallet and taps that chisel, and to the inexperienced eye, nothing’s happening at all. The veteran knows that a chip doesn’t have to fall every time the chisel is struck, because he understands that every time he strikes the chisel, he weakens the stone. If he’s patient long enough, the piece he wants to chip off will depart from the main rock.

Seeing your problems based on your experience can be good or bad. If we’ve had good experiences in handling problems, we will be able to handle them in the future; if we’ve had bad experiences, then we will probably continue to do so until we get a better understanding of how to deal with difficulties.

A couple went camping in the mountains, and their guide said, “Now, you’ll see snakes, but don’t worry about it; they’re not poisonous.” Even though the man had a tremendous phobia for snakes, he went hiking alone the next day. When he got back to the cottage where they were staying, his clothes were torn, and he was battered and bleeding. His wife said, “My goodness, what happened?”

He said, “Oh, I was hiking on one of the high trails and I saw a snake. I jumped off a fifty-foot cliff.”

She said, “But, honey, don’t you remember, the guide said those snakes weren’t poisonous.” He said, “They don’t have to be poisonous if you jump off a fifty-foot cliff.” The damage was already done. What was his problem? His problem wasn’t snakes; it was fear of snakes. His bad experiences in the past caused him to see the problem wrongly.

We also see our problems in the light of our present environment. Here is a key idea you need to remember: The problems surrounding us are not as crucial as the people surrounding us. We are not overcome by our problems, but if the people around us don’t know how to handle problems, then we may be overcome.

There are two ways to respond to an environment filled with problems. We can be like the gardener who took great pride in his lawn. He kept it beautiful. One year his lawn was besieged with dandelions. He tried everything and still couldn’t get rid of them. Finally, in his frustration, he wrote the Department of Agriculture explaining all the different dandelion deterrents he had tried and asking what he should do next. The answer came back from the Department of Agriculture: “Try getting used to them.” That’s not what he wanted to hear. That’s not what we want to hear either, but sometimes it’s the best advice we’ll get. The person who expects to live in a problem-free society is going to be as frustrated as the fellow who thought that he was going to rid his lawn of all the dandelions.

I saw a cartoon the other day that showed a little boy in a car watching his dad outside in the pouring rain fixing a flat tire. The boy has the window down, and he’s asking his father why this is happening to them. The father looks at the boy and says, “Son, don’t you understand? This is life. This is what is happening. We can’t switch to another channel.”

There’s something else that we need to realize. We may always have dandelions in our yards, but we don’t have to let those dandelions mess up our lives. During the Second World War, a young soldier married a woman and brought her to his post in the California desert. She didn’t like the desert; she didn’t like the barrenness; her husband was away on active duty most of the time and she was very lonely and bored. Finally she wrote her mother and said, “Mom, I’m coming home. I just don’t like the desert, and I don’t like the dryness, and I don’t like the fact that my husband’s gone. It’s an ugly place to live.” Her mother wrote back to her these two lines: “Two men looked out through prison bars; one saw mud and the other saw stars.” That young wife got the message; she decided to look for stars. She began to learn as much as she could about desert flowers and cacti. She studied the language, folklore, and traditions of the Indians who were her neighbors. By the time her husband’s tour of duty was over, she had become so engrossed with the desert that she wrote a book on it. Her problem was not her problem. It was how she saw it.

In the fifteenth century in Europe, the whole continent was filled with despair. It was probably the most discouraging time in European history. In 1492, in the
Nuremburg Chronicle
, a German wrote that the end had come; there was nothing left worth living for. At the close of his book he left several blank pages on which he proposed that the reader fill in any discouraging events or situations that he had left out. The next year, 1493, a young buck sailor returned to a Portuguese port with the most exciting story. In the midst of this negative environment, Christopher Columbus came home saying, “Guys, there’s a whole new world out there. Get your eyes off your problems. Rip those pages out of your book!” Christopher Columbus was not willing to let the environment of his day determine his dream; he refused to let present problems order his future.

We tackle problems our own size. Big people tackle big problems, and small people tackle small problems. The better a person’s self-image, the more willing he or she is to take a risk and handle a big problem. The more fragile a person’s self-image, the less willing she or he is to tackle a big problem.

Problems can stop you temporarily, but only you can stop yourself permanently. We cannot continually handle problems in a way that is inconsistent with the way we see ourselves. If you evaluate yourself as a person of worth, then you will begin to tackle big problems. One of the ways you can tell whether you’re growing emotionally and spiritually is by the size of the problems that you’re willing to tackle.

The size of your problem is determined not only by how you see it but by what you seek in life. Again, your problem is not your problem. Problems defeat us when we lack purpose in life. Goal-oriented people don’t let problems deter them from their goals. If they want to reach them badly enough, they’re going to reach them.

The night before my son’s first soccer game, his coach sat the kids down, and she said, “I’m really not interested in winning this year; I’m interested in having you kids learn how to play soccer—learn the rules, the fundamentals.” I understood what she was saying, but I was so proud of my boy Joel when he blurted out, “But, Mrs. Jones! I want to win!” My last advice to him was to get the ball and go for the goal.

People who regularly allow themselves to get sidetracked by problems are people who have no clear purpose in life. When we have a purpose, when we really seek and desire the best of life, our problems begin to shrink. Here’s the way it works. As our purpose increases, our problems decrease. As our goal decreases, our problems increase.

Our problems are no longer problems when we seek learning instead of leisure. You show me a person who loves to learn about life, and I’ll show you a person who handles problems well. On the other hand, people who want to live lives of leisure, to whom life is nothing but a big vacation, become frustrated with their problems. M. Scott Peck, a psychiatrist, has written several bestselling books in the last few years, including
The Road Less Traveled
. Peck had decided to do some case studies on the subject of evil. As he did the case studies, he became convinced that evil was a reality, and he became a Christian. In
The Road Less Traveled
(Simon and Schuster) he writes, “It is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning” (p. 16). Peck says that life doesn’t have meaning unless we learn how to handle our problems. He said, “Problems are the cutting edge that distinguish between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually.… It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn. As Benjamin Franklin said, ‘Those things that hurt, instruct’” (p. 16). Notice what he says about people who want to avoid the pain of problems: “Fearing the pain involved, almost all of us … attempt to avoid problems. We procrastinate … forget them, pretend they do not exist. We even take drugs to assist us in ignoring them, so that by deadening ourselves to the pain we can forget the problems that cause the pain” (p. 16). Then he gives the clincher. He says, “This tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness” (p. 17).