Overwhelmed by Life's Curveballs? God can handle your questions
Life can throw us curveballs that make it seem like God is either not paying attention or doesn’t care?
We know that it’s not true, we know that time after time He has shown Himself for who He is, a trustworthy, caring Father who wants us to become not better, but the best of who we can be. Nevertheless, we feel overwhelmed, tired of trying, and just ready to give up.
When hard things happen all around and life appears to contradict God’s revelation of His power and plans. When it feels like people who don’t care about Him, about other people, are just getting away with everything. When you struggle to see all this injustice you just wonder, “Why isn’t God stepping in?”
The last time when I was feeling so overwhelmed by working on putting together my small business, my desire to strengthen my relationships and on top of that the daily goal of just taking care of myself to the best with the challenge of my disabilities (eat healthy, exercise, get proper rest…)
I just went to bed and started crying to God, I started talking to Him and just pouring out my heart and mind on Him. I prayed for guidance and I pleaded for the fulfillment of one of my favorite promises in Psalms 32:8 I will teach you and guide you in the way you should go.
Once I placed myself in His arms and requested His Holy Spirit the word Habakkuk kept coming into my mind. I started thinking, but what about Habakkuk, what chapter or verses should I focus on? And then the thought came to my mind, what does that name even mean? Once I looked it up in my Strong’s concordance, I found that it meant, the one who embraces, the one who clings.
And the gentle voice of the Holy Spirit whispered softly and tenderly in my mind, ‘Joanna, just cling to Me. With all that you have, just cling to Me. I’ve got you, and you know, that you can trust in Me’.
Joanna, just cling to Me. With all that you have, just cling to Me. I’ve got you, and you know, that you can trust in Me’
You know, that’s just how Habakkuk felt. He was seeing injustices all over the place, His own people totally disregarding God, who had been so merciful to them. Disregarding His plain will when He had shown Himself faithful and trustworthy.
It was really tough for him when God said He was going to use Babylon—a pagan nation —to set things right. That just threw him off.
It’s like, “Really, God? Them?”
Yet, through this conversation, Habakkuk learns huge things, but even more importantly, through it all He gets to know more intimately the heart of God, He doesn’t just learn about the situation, about God, about himself. He gets to know God personally; they get closer to each other!
So, what are 3 takeaways we can draw from this prophet’s experience to our own life when we find ourselves asking “Why isn’t God stepping in?”
# 1 God's got this
You know, for a couple of years, since my divorce I’ve been going back and forth with the decision of where should I live. Should I move back to the area where my family lives, or should I stay?
In the beginning, honestly, I didn’t see any other option but to go back to my family’s area, but there was this legal process I had to wait for to finish, and then it was my monthly treatment that would be close to impossible to get where my family lives, then it was one thing and the other.
I knew that God could take care of all the obstacles and hurdles here, or anywhere else. I just wanted to be in His will. And time after time, as I was seeking Him, He would talk to me through Scripture, in circumstances, through people. He would woo me to Himself. And just assure me that He is God, He knows what He’s doing.
I AM GOD, I know what I'm doing
My part is to follow Him day by day, and moment by moment. He reminded me that as I surrender my life to Him every day, He is in control.
He’s got this.
His plan is solid. And no matter how crazy things look from our perspective, God’s wisdom, goodness, and power are unmatched.
He’s in control, steering history and ruling over nations, even when it doesn’t seem like it. And you know what’s amazing, God doesn’t rush to judgment. He’s patient, but make no mistake, He will address every wrong. This is why God is the one we can rely on, no matter what.
He’s got this!
# 2 God can handle your questions
As the months passed by, I kept asking God, when should I move near my family?
After a few months, I started changing my questions from Lord when should I go? To Lord where should I be at this moment? And I can tell you in the last couple of years He’s been showing different reasons why He has wanted me to not move.
But sometimes, there are things that come up that bring back that question in my heart. What has kept me sane and kept me moving forward despite all the uncertainties in my life, with several disabilities, starting a small business, and being away from my family, is the fact that I have accepted His offer. I have kept going to him with what’s going on in my heart and mind.
God can handle your questions, and even more so, he invites you to go to Him with them. In Isaiah 1:18 God is talking and He says: ‘“Come now, let us reason together”. He is inviting you, me, and everyone to reason with him, to bring our questions yes, but also to take time to hear back from him, to seek after Him.
Habakkuk wasn’t scared to really dig into the tough questions he struggled with. He didn’t just keep his doubts to himself; he laid them all out there for God, curious to see how God would weigh in, on his deep questions. After a couple of back-and-forths, Habakkuk’s understanding of who God is, along with His incredible power and master plan, just deepened.
God’s invitation is not just to satisfy curiosity or to promote doubt. He says ‘Come now’, He’s calling us to go to Him, to not be trapped in our own thoughts, going over and over through the same record, like a hamster running on a wheel.
That’s not going to get us anywhere. At least anywhere we really want to be.
Please get this, God can handle your questions. And if we heed His call, and go to Him, we are allowing His presence to overshadow our questionings, His light to bring hope and peace into the darkness of our despair.
He hasn’t promised to give us all the answers, not because He doesn’t care but because His thoughts are higher than ours, there are things that now we can’t understand. We just don’t have the capacity to get some of His answers.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.
And just like Jesus said to His disciples in John 16:12,’ I still have much to tell you, but you cannot yet bear to hear it’.
Remember the reasons God has been showing me about why my place is in California, at least for this season? Those didn’t just come right away. I think it took about a year and a half for me to ‘see’ the first of these reasons. And that brings us to the third takeaway:
# 3 No answer, it’s an answer. WAIT
Yes, for about a year to a year and a half, it seemed as if I was hearing crickets… But I started to realize that there was a common thread whenever in my relationship with God I brought up the subject of my location. And that was: Wait…
A few times He brought up Psalms 37:34, ‘Wait for the LORD and keep His way’. Another time it was Isaiah 40:31’But they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength’. Other times it was Bible verses like Proverbs 20:22, and Psalms 27:14.
So, No answer, it’s an answer. Wait!
The word wait in the original Hebrew is qāvâ, and I bring it up because when we see the word wait, we may think of a boring waiting room in a doctor’s office or something like that.
But that’s not what this is referring to. The word kava brings the idea of an eager expectation. You know, waiting on the Lord isn’t just sitting around twiddling our thumbs or feeling stuck in a rut. It’s filled with trust and faith, but it’s not just in our heads—it shows in what we do.
When God tells us to wait on Him, it might seem like an impossible task. And honestly, it is, unless He’s already been working on us from the inside out through the Holy Spirit.
Our own excitement and energy? They’re just not going to cut it when things get really tough. There’s only one thing that’s strong enough to handle that kind of pressure: clinging close to Jesus, having that one-on-one connection with Him.
Waiting on the Lord is never a waste of time
As my Bible commentary says: “As Habakkuk learned more and more about the person, power, and plan of God, this caused him to conclude that the more he knows about the planner, the more he can trust his plans, no matter what God brings to pass, the just shall leave by faith”
Faith in the God who’s got it, who can handle all our questions, who sometimes answers them as we can understand, and when we cannot get it, tell us to wait. When we find ourselves overwhelmed, when we get tired of the constant challenges, when we find ourselves asking “Why isn’t God stepping in?”,
Let’s cling to Jesus
Let’s trust in God’s big picture, even when we can’t see all the pieces. Let’s not shy away from asking the Lord our hard questions, from wrestling with our doubts, and bring everything to Him. Because, in the end, it’s through this wrestling that our faith can grow stronger and our trust deeper.
The faith that strengthened Habakkuk in those days of deep trial was the same faith that sustains God’s people today. In the darkest hours, under circumstances the most hostile and harsh, the follower of Jesus can keep his soul stayed upon the source of all light and power.