Since I was a little girl, I have always wanted to fix problems, make things better, and keep those I care about safe. Being raised in a Christian Science household, I was taught early on that when things went wrong, I could always turn to God and prayer for help. And I did feel the comfort and healing that comes from trusting God. But lots of times I was thinking, “Great! I can use God to help me fix things.”
The problem was that as much as I wanted to make things better, in all honesty I saw the problems as being bigger than God, and in great need of me to personally make things right. As I grew up, I found that while I had some success in seeing God’s goodness and supremacy, my efforts to “use” God to help me fix problems weren’t working out so well.
Through many humble moments of prayer and my exhaustive and futile attempts to use mental gymnastics to fix things, I came to see I was holding to several misperceptions and ultimately reached the following conclusions.
