PROBLEMS CONSTITUTE A SIGN OF LIFE

 by Adam Harbinson

Norman Vincent Peale, author of the multi-million best seller, ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’, tells the story of someone he knew, who more than anything else, wanted to be free from problems. Peale offered to bring him to a place where he knew there reposed 150,000 men, women and children who had absolutely no problems; ‘Their once-fevered brows are calmed,’ he assured his friend. ‘They rest from their labours. They have no problems, but they are all in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx – they are dead!’

And so he argued, problems constitute a sign of life. He goes on, ‘If today you have no problems, I urge you, go home as fast as you can. Go into your room, lock the door, fall to your knees and cry out to the Lord, “What’s the matter Lord? Don’t you trust me any more? Give me some problems!”’

Wouldn’t life be a dull place without them: a flat and uninteresting landscape without hill or valley?

I read an interesting book recently by the late Hugh Black, an old Scottish minister who combined Church of Scotland Presbyterianism with Pentecostalism and ended up with Struthers Memorial Church in Glasgow.The title of the book is ‘War in Heaven and Earth,’ and in it he said that we should never, ever pray about our problems. He said it’s a very dangerous thing to do, because if you focus attention on them, they expand until they fill your horizon. We should focus instead on the solution.

‘God says, “Let it alone – drop it in the sea of my forgetfulness,”’ he goes on.  In other words, leave your problems with God, and never think about them again, and I think he’s on to something. We like to go to church and sing, ‘Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there,’ but what we actually tend to do is show him our problems, discuss them with him, maybe even ask him what he thinks we should do about them, and we carry them home with us again, set them on the mantelpiece, and worry about them. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?

Norman Vincent Peals was right, problems constitute a sign of life. Hugh Black was right too, we focus on our problems, we go on and on about them, we give them an exalted position in our lives, and we miss the joy of living. I thought about Terry Waite when I read Hugh Black’s book. I spoke with Terry a few of years ago about his five years as a captive in the Middle East, and he said he never once prayed about his situation. Instead, he focused on the Common Book of Prayer, which as an Anglican vicar he had memorised; constantly declaring the majesty and greatness of God. ‘If I had concentrated on my own predicament,’ he said, ‘I’d never have survived.’

One of the best church signs I’ve seen for a long time is the one outside Wesley Centenary Methodist Church in my hometown. It says, ‘Don’t tell God how big your storm is, tell the storm how big your God is.’

We need to learn to live, really live as our Creator intended, but we never will, as long as we’re happy nursing our problems. Take them to the Lord, leave them with him to sort out, and live – abundantly.