Self-Inflicted Chaos

As I was driving down the road the other day, my 3-year old began to cry tears of pain in her car-seat.  I asked her what happened and she said "the stickers are stuck on my arm!"  Someone had just given her some rather large stickers and instead of waiting until we got home and using them in a book or a color book, she decided it was best to use them on her arm.  The problem, however, was that now they were stuck on the little hairs on her arms!  In order to remove them, she had to rip them off, and oh the pain!

"But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.  If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.  But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.  A double minded man is unstable in all his ways," James 1:4-8.

How many of us find ourselves in a sticky mess so many times and wonder how we got there in the first place?  We could be spared so much pain in this life if we would allow God to develop His patience in us.  As Christians, we are called to be people of faith and peace, not trouble and chaos.  So much of what we endure is "self-inflicted"; brought on by our own choices.  God does not enjoy watching you suffer any more than I did not like having to tell my daughter that she would have to rip the sticker off!  Choosing to obey the Word of God, and staying in the will of God is ALWAYS the best choice.  "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid,"  John 14:27.