Problems and Provision

During my recent trip to San Francisco, I decided to bring along some Graham Cooke to listen to.  You ever hear or read something about how The Kingdom works, some principle or law or something, and you hear God say, "Pay attention!  You're about to do this!"?  Yeah, that happened to me on my trip.

I was listening to Graham tell an audience that they  need to learn to see correctly.  Graham does that a lot.  But in this instance he was talking about learning to see problems for opportunities for God to glorify Himself.  Graham said, "God never presents you with a problem that does not also come with His provision."  I could go into more detail but the gist of it is that much of our joy as Christians is stolen through the way we choose to view life.  We need to learn to do as Jesus said and keep our eye single.  Keep it trained on God and heaven and how heaven operates.  A worldly problem isn't a problem at all.  It's a dock for the ship of heavenly provision.

So as I was listening to Graham explain all this, I went through situations in my mind's eye where I had seen this happen.  There were many.  I also took a look at how I reacted to the circumstance when first presented with the problem.  I found two important patterns in my history:

1. I reacted out of fear.  By seeing the situation as a threat, I allowed it to command my emotional state.  I believe Yoda put it best when he said, "Fear leads to anger.  Anger leads to hate.  Hate leads to suffering."  What Yoda didn't tell young Anakin was that suffering is caused by missing the provision God sent along with the problem.
2. When I gave myself over to the power of fear, I panicked and made decisions that caused me to miss provision.  It's widely-known secular wisdom that to stay calm in a crisis situation is the best way to avoid tragedy.  Pilots who stay calm in a dog fight usually win.  Soldiers who stay calm in a firefight usually win.  In each instance where I panicked in my history, I jerked the wheel of life hard to one side or the other and ran head-on into yet another problem.

So what's the connection between staying calm and divine provision?  If you make all your decisions by simply reacting to the problem, all of your focus is on the problem.  You end up with tunnel vision and are unable to see the opening God has created for you to receive His provision.  As my trip to San Francisco came to a close, I learned this in a big way for the first time.

I had a meeting until 5pm in Palo Alto (about 40 minutes from San Francisco) and a flight out of San Francisco that boarded at 8:50pm.  Then I had a connecting flight out of Phoenix, AZ, at 10:50pm to Baltimore.  I knew ahead of time that there would be wailing and gnashing of teeth on that trip.  I'm a tall man.  Long flights are usually brutal.  Historically, I've tried to sleep for the duration of the flight.  A connecting flight made this impossible.  I had to have my wits about me to connect.  So I was silently dreading this flight.  When my meeting was over I noticed that I had a voicemail.  It was the airline saying that my flight out of San Francisco would be delayed by 2 hours.  They were concerned that I would not make my connection and wanted me to either fly out of Oakland or San Jose to Phoenix so I could make the connecting flight.  But I had a rental car that needed to be turned in at the San Francisco car return!  How would I make it to either airport?  I already checked out of my hotel, so I wouldn't be able to stay there if I had to!  Was I going to have to sleep in an airport for a night or more!!!????

As all the worst-case-scenario thoughts raced through my head, I remembered God.  I calmed myself by reminding myself that He is intimately involved in my life and wants only the best for me.  It would be an awful mistake to get all upset and do something that would cause me to miss His provision.  So I called the ticketing agent at the airliner.  The phone number didn't work.  I tried again.  Same thing.  I looked on their website to find SOMEONE to call about this mess.  Nothing.  The best I could muster was a computer voice asking me to dial this number for this person or that number for that person.  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!  TIME TO PANIC!!!

Then God stepped in and reminded me about what Graham had said, "No problem comes without God's provision."  God said, "Do something crazy; trust Me."

So I calmed down and decided that, no matter what, God would make this experience amazing!  It didn't matter if I went to San Jose or Oakland or even if I did have to sleep in an airport terminal.  God would be there.  We would have fun, He and I.  So I looked forward to the next 24 hours with joy.  Then I just made decisions that were simple and made sense.  I had to return the car I rented.  This means that I had to go to San Francisco airport.  I knew that by the time I got there, there would be zero chance of me making my connecting flight.  But I went and did so with joy.  As I drove through rush-hour traffic, I was joyful.  I sang songs and prayed for people.  I marvelled at the scenery of Palo Alto and the greater San Fran area.  It's truly a beautiful place.  In short, my struggle with the problem pushed me deeper into His Presence.  This situation was not a problem.  It was to be a dramatic experience of God's provision.

I returned the rental with no issues and got to the check-in counter of the airline.  I explained my situation and gave them my ID.  Almost immediately, and without any discussion, the check-in agent says to me, "We've put you on a direct flight to Baltimore on another airline.  You have plenty of time.  It doesn't leave until 10:50pm and it arrives in Baltimore at 6:20am."

Dude...

Want to know what time the original connecting flight out of Phoenix arrived in Baltimore?  6:20am.  So let me get this straight, I miss the original flight, that I was dreading, and get put on what I would consider an upgrade and I lose absolutely no time what-so-ever?  Provision.

It turns out that the direct flight they ended up putting me on was full.  Had I not been assigned a seat as early as I was, I never would have gotten out of San Francisco that night.  Had I demanded to speak to someone about the debacle before leaving Palo Alto, I'd have missed a flight that I didn't even know existed.  Had I driven to San Jose or Oakland, who knows what would have happened.  Clearly the only way for me to get on that upgraded flight was to trust God and carry on.  The only way to not experience suffering that night was to see that God had a plan for joy that night and that I only had to believe that and ACT as if it were real.  All my decisions were intuitive on the way to the airport because, to me, His provision is real.  

So what am I more concerned with in any situation:  that the situation goes smoothly, or that I'm smooth in the situation?  The only way I know to remain smooth is to remain mindful of who He is and who I am in Him.  It doesn't matter where I go or what I'm doing, I can have joy so long as I'm doing it in Him and with Him.