The Lonely Post

One of my favorite places to linger when I was growing up was this beautiful spot atop Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, TN. (See accompanying picture) It didn't take a lot of imagination to visualize the Union army below, surrounded on all sides, their supplies diminishing daily, morale fading quickly and the Confederates standing guard from above, entrenched on the mountains surrounding Chattanooga.

The Confederate forces, had their armies camped on Lookout Mountain, Signal Mountain and Missionary Ridge. Artillery was placed in strategic positions to render a direct attack and this status quo remained for around six weeks. Passivity was not the friend of the Confederates and they were about to pay the price for their in-activity. On the sixth week, President Lincoln ordered General Grant to Chattanooga and to use whatever means necessary to open up the blocked supply lines and break the rebel siege.

What To Do When Nothing Is Working Out?

I recently googled this question, "What to do when nothing is working out?" and I received 1,080,000,000 responses. Yes, over 1 billion pages on the Internet are devoted to answering this question. 

It is probably of little surprise that very few of these over a billion pages suggest turning to God in your time of trouble. But if I'm being truthful, I need to confess that my first instincts are not to always seek God in my time of suffering. I'm much more prone to try to fix the situation (s) myself. 

Yet the fact that we have so many words devoted to this subject is a telling display of our own pride and self-reliance. There is nothing that I can do, say, imagine, manipulate, or reason, that will truly answer the question, "What to do when nothing is working out?"

"But still I try."

It seems very foolish when I read those words in print, shouting testimony to my own foolishness, trying to seem strong and wise but sinking deeper in my own quagmire with each retelling.

Frank Abagnale: "Catch Me If You Can"

Favorite Quotes

"Nothing is so deadening to the divine, as an habitual dealing with the outsides of holy things." - George MacDonald

"O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life." - Francis of Assisi

"Beware of being obsessed with consistency to your own convictions instead of being devoted to God. The important consistency in a saint is not to a principle but to the divine life. It is easier to be an excessive fanatic than it is to be consistently faithful, because God causes an amazing humbling of our religious conceit when we are faithful to Him." ~ Oswald Chambers

“Let God’s promises shine on your problems.” – Corrie ten Boom

“God never said that the journey would be easy, but He did say that the arrival would be worthwhile” – Max Lucado

“If you believe in a God who controls the big things, you have to believe in a God who controls the little things. It is we, of course, to whom things look ‘little’ or ‘big’.” – Elisabeth Elliot

“Relying on God has to start all over everyday, as if nothing has yet been done.” – C. S. Lewis