Managing your life is an easy thing. No problem. That’s true as long as there are “no problems.” Difficulties and crises, however, can turn a life upside down and cause it to fall apart. You cannot talk about managing your life without talking about how to manage a crisis in your life.
When my wife Libby told me we were going to have our first child, we were so excited. Being ex-hippies, we thought the only proper way to have a baby was for us to have “natural childbirth” This meant we needed to attend a series of called ‘La Maze’, or subtitled, ‘Childbirth Without Pain’. Yes sir, we were going to have a baby without any drugs and without any pain at all. All you had to do was just ‘breathe right’. Why all these people had not caught on to this before was beyond us… I mean, for thousands of years, women had been experiencing pain in childbirth, when all you had to do was huff and puff at the right time and presto …No Pain!
Well, we attended the classes faithfully along with others in our community. Our wives would all lay on the floor and breath rapidly while we husbands would use a stop watch and time them breathing. We also had to watch videos of birthing procedures. I couldn’t believe it; I actually had to watch a video of a lady I did not even know having a baby!
Anyway when the time was just about right for the birth of our child, the nurse asked my wife if she had had “pains” yet. “Oh no, we are not having pains in our delivery,” my wife said. The nurse just looked at us and smiled and said, “Come back when the pains start.” Sure enough, real pains came. I mean it was bad! I had brought my stop watch and did everything I was supposed to do, but for some reason we had “Childbirth With Pain.” My wife, who is usually a fun person, completely lost her sense of humor. Later on, she had some choice words to say to our La Maze instructor.
The point is, we had false expectations about how to handle the difficulty. We had wrong assumptions and unreal planning. People do that with managing their lives.
The truth is all lives have difficulties and crises… Not some… ALL. What DO you do to manage though those times? How can you prepare?
Jesus has the clear and simple answer:
Matthew 7:24-27 (NASB)
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts upon them, may be compared to a wise man, who built his house upon the rock. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock. And everyone who hears these words of Mine, and does not act upon them, will be like a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house; and it fell, and great was its fall.”
You see, it is not enough to want to make it through the hard times. It is not even enough to pray. Jesus said that all lives will experience crisis and difficulties (floods and wind), so much so that they burst against (try to destroy) the house (our lives). Managing your life correctly means preparing for those events. Jesus said it was only those who had made the effort to dig down to the Rock and build their homes on that obedience were the ones who would successfully weather the storm. There is not enough money, education, or personality to cause your life to stand when destruction comes. Building your life by obeying Jesus Christ is not easy. And obedience costs. But it is worth it.