I stand with my hands open and uplifted. My heart willing, but resistant. I accept and reject all at the same time. There is a comfort and a confusion. A thankfulness and a regret. A desire to accept and a desire to change all.  The thing I did not want has become a reality. Where is God in this? How can I resolve the unresolvable? 

Is that a familiar scenario? More familiar than you'd like to admit? Yeah, me too. We pray earnestly. We trust God. We search the Scriptures. We stand on promises. Then the unthinkable must be pondered as realty. The un-faceable must be faced. We question God. We ask why. We tell ourselves that God is in control. We speak the words to others. Yet, inside our hearts scream for answers and receive silence. How do we move forward in faith when God seems to have ignored our most fervent, most faith-filled prayers? Where is the YES that we know God yearns for?

I once heard Elisabeth Elliot, the well-known author and wife of martyred missionary Jim Elliot, give a talk on suffering, a topic she had become an unanticipated expert on. She described suffering as "having what you don't want or wanting what you don't have." She acknowledged that included everyone. The response she encouraged encompassed two concepts, worship and offering. 

Worship, at it's heart is not about music or church services. Worship is about giving God the honor he deserves as God, recognizing His great worth and power. As a response to the unwelcome in our lives worship means to recognize that He is still God, still good and all-powerful. It is to recognize that He is sovereign. 

Sovereign is defined as "supreme power or authority". To recognize that God is sovereign means that you and I accept that He has the right to do whatever He wants without giving us an explanation. We can accept it, but we often don't like it. 

That is where the second part of Elisabeth Elliot's teaching comes into play, offering. I take this unwanted circumstance or unmet request and give it back to God as an expression of trust. I give to God all my proposed answers to this situation and accept that His intelligence and wisdom far outweighs my own. I accept that His power is superior to all others and that what He does is always right, even when I think it's wrong. 

I say YES to sovereignty. 

I've said YES to sovereignty when someone I loved, whose healing I prayed for earnestly, died. When a position I knew I was called to was lost. When children strayed. When loved ones suffered emotional turmoil or physical pain. When the gospel was rejected. When losses seemed greater than gains. When hard work produced no results. When the headlines hollered out heartbreak for many or few. When...You get the picture. You could write a list of your own. 

There comes a point where sovereignty is the only explanation for suffering. To only blame Satan minimizes God's supreme power. That's the hardest thing to accept about sovereignty; God can stop the suffering, but doesn't. 

So, we say YES, by giving Him our worship, our recognition that He is still worthy of our trust, and by offering, lifting our open hands and hurting hearts as an expression of our decision to give Him that trust. 

When we can give God that YES, His sovereignty soothes the unresolveable and He becomes the resolution. 

Key thought: I respond to God's sovereignty with worship and offering.

A Scripture to consider:

A YES challenge: Where do you need to say YES to sovereignty today? How can worship and offering become a part of your response?

Prayer: 

Lord, today I open my hands and my heart lifting them up to You in the midst of the circumstance You know I asked You to resolve or remove. I choose to recognize that You are good, You are God and You have the right to do what You want in my life and in the world. Let Your sovereignty soothe the unresolved in my life. You are the resolution I need most. Amen.