Life is an amazing gift but life, if we’re all honest, is littered with moments of pain. Physical pain. Emotional pain. Mental pain. Relational pain. As long as we’re being honest here, life has more than its fair share of sorrow and suffering. At times, life honestly doesn’t seem fair.
I’ll take it a step further as long as we’re being honest here. Sometimes, life’s problems seem so overwhelming that hope is hard to come by. When I get to the point of feeling overwhelmed, the enemy and his lies try to get me to believe my problems and circumstances are too big for God…that my problems are bigger than God and bigger than His ability to deal with them.
What becomes painfully apparent to me in such moments is that the main battleground of my life is not my emotional state or the political divisions of the day or the world falling apart around me…from family traumas every family faces at some point in their lives to the wacky world Covid has created. No. The main battleground of my life is the battleground of my mind. The enemy vies for my thoughts. That is why I make a point of renewing my mind each and every day in a spiritual sense. But the battleground of my mind has taken on a physical aspect which has basically doubled the efforts I personally make every day to bolster right thinking rather than stinkin’ thinkin’.
A personal case in point? I struggle with Parkinson’s Disease. I know it is a degenerative disease that is slowly attacking my mind, so in addition to the spiritual battle I wage for my thoughts…for my faith…for my identity…for my sanity…I now have to wage a literal physical war for my mind. Just as with the spiritual warfare I face with my mind, I must utilize physical ways to renew my mind.
In addition to mentally putting off the lies of the enemy and replacing them with the thoughts of God and His Word, I must push back against the physical attacks on my brain by intentionally exercising my physical body, by keeping my mind sharp by having a daily list of creative things I want to accomplish, whether writing music or writing books, by working the New York Times Crossword each and every day, by challenging my children to defeat me at Wordle each day, by taking dopamine 4 times a day to replace this chemical neurotransmitter my brain is not making enough of anymore, by watching Jeopardy.
Basically, I exercise my brain to keep it sharp and I daily combine this physical renewing of my mind with the spiritual practice of continually renewing my mind. At times, this seems like a battle too big for me…and, just being honest here, a battle too big for God. But you want to know something? What I have found is something quite amazing. Through all I am going through, I have come to the realization that nothing - and I mean NOTHING - is too big for my God.
In 2 Chronicles 20:6 NASB, Jehoshaphat prays, "LORD, God of our fathers, are You not God in the heavens? And are You not ruler over all the kingdoms of the nations? Power and might are in Your hand so that no one can stand against You.”
Jehoshaphat is basically describing the BIGNESS of our God. What I would like to share about the massive magnitude of all God is best illustrated in a series of events in my life. During the summer of 1997, my pastor was teaching a sermon series called “Summer Blockbusters” in which he took a popular movie title and theme, and related the title and theme to a spiritual teaching or to an attribute of God and His nature.
In those days, I traveled to minister around the nation and I was unable to be at the particular service in which my pastor shared a teaching on the bigness of God using the movie “Big” as his source material. The movie, starring Tom Hanks, is about a 12 year old boy who wishes to be an adult…and is transformed into an adult overnight. The message was more about the fact that God is bigger than anything we can face in life, so the movie title was basically a jumping off point into the greatness of God.
During that summer, I wrote a song for each of those sermons from the series so, even though I was not at that particular service, I had already been meditating on the subject! As I flew to California for a ministry opportunity, I asked the Lord if He had anything for me regarding His bigness.
I got out my manuscript book and silently gazed out the window and let my heart and imagination go. At 40,000 feet it was not difficult to begin thinking about the magnitude of God’s nature. What is difficult to comprehend is that His bigness dwells in my smallness!
At that particular season of life, my pastor and his wife were praying for the healing of one of their daughters who was suffering with a very, very rare liver disease. An incurable disease. What I saw demonstrated by their lives as they walked out this very insurmountable problem was a simple and comforting faith in the bigness of God.
Over the next few years, God provided a new liver in the form of a transplant. Not only did that little girl survive, but she is now a thriving adult woman, serving God and married to a good man. What I am discovering is that God had the grace for something that was literally beyond the reach of human hope - an incurable disease - and literally made a way through to an amazingly abundant life…and that He has made that same grace available to me! Is any obstacle really an obstacle to God? Do we limit Him because we choose to see from our own perspective rather than His? I know I do.
Matthew 19:23-26 NASB - 23 And Jesus said to His disciples, "Truly I say to you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 "And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." 25 When the disciples heard [this,] they were very astonished and said, "Then who can be saved?" 26 And looking at [them,] Jesus said to them, "With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Do you have a mountain of any kind in your life right now that appears to be too big for God? A sea that needs parting? A cross you cannot bear? A giant that is too big for you to defeat? An illness that robs you of more and more life each and every day? Do you need a God bigger than any of those things? Our God is that God! His ability and capability - His strength - is bigger than anything life can throw our way. Maybe we simply need to put off our personal perspective and put on the perspective of our God. Just remind yourself every time you feel overwhelmed of this truth directly from the mouth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. "With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Just agree with God in these moments. With our God ALL things are possible.
Dennis Jernigan
To hear The Dennis Jernigan Podcast version of this blog and to hear the song inspired during this season of DJ’s life, Somebody Big, just go to http://podcast.dennisjernigan.com/e/somebody-big/
Photo courtesy of https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2019/01/27/22/32/mountains-3959204_1280.jpg