More recently, I’ve found myself drawn to HGTV. "Fixer Upper," "Property Brothers," "Love It or List It" -- so many shows that have fascinated me. The kind of fascination where you can’t leave the room without knowing which house the couple picked and you and your roommate are picturing how you would renovate the apartment.
One weekend as that roommate and I were just watching HGTV all day, a lot of interesting episodes came on. We watched an episode where the wife was obsessed with having storage and the husband was crazy about having outlets everywhere. We watched another where a couple kept coming, and even showing up unannounced, to check up on the builders’ progress and offering new ideas and plans last minute. There was even an older couple, nervous about renovating a house because they’d been failed before by renovators who didn’t do their job. And, of course, most people initially want their new home to be “move-in ready.”
I was amazed by how some of these couples were so skeptical of these talented people working on their houses. From all the episodes I’d seen and the fact that they have their own TV shows, I was thinking, Why won’t they just let them do their job? At the end they’re always blown away by the results and can’t thank them enough. These people know what they’re doing. Why won’t they just sit back and let them work?
Then the thought suddenly hit me.
I love how these shows on HGTV like "Fixer Upper" and "Property Brothers" remind me of our relationship with God. Often times we want things our way, quick and easy and move-in ready, but God has other things in mind. He shows us our lives and our situations that need a lot of work – work that seems impossible. But we have to make a choice: are we going to trust Him or not?
And even when we say we trust Him with our situation, sometimes we're that person who just steps aside and lets God work… But more often than not, we're that person who has lots of “ideas” of what God could do to make everything perfect. Sometimes we're that person who questions every move He makes and complains when something doesn't seem logical. Or we're that person who's obsessed with that specific detail in our lives working out: there has to be storage, or there has to be power outlets everywhere or there has to be a huge kitchen. And sometimes we may find it hard to trust Him because we've placed our trust in others to renovate our lives before and it didn't go as planned and it all fell apart. All the while God is dealing with our lack of trust saying, “I'm experienced in this. I've done this before and it always works out. I know what I'm doing and what will work out best. Why don't you just trust Me?”
But when God finishes His work in our circumstances, we're left in awe, wondering how He did it and it's greater than anything we could have ever imagined. Every detail is worked out and we wouldn't change a thing.
God knows what He's doing and He sees the bigger picture. All we have to do is trust Him.
