As a college student, I volunteered at a youth camp for several summers. Most of the time, I led worship and hung out with the girls, but this night, the altar was full of teenagers and the youth minister asked if I would help counsel. Within 10 seconds of my “yes,” a young man made a beeline to me. He was middle school-aged. I knew his name but that was all I knew. I asked him why he came to the front and he told me it was because he wanted to ask Jesus into his heart.

I reviewed what that meant with him and then asked him to pray with me. “Nope.” was all he said.

Okay, so this is not what I expected! It made no sense. I explained the gospel and asked him again. “Do you want to pray to receive Christ?”

“Nope.”

I asked “Do you understand?” He answered, “Nope.”

So, I explained again and thought we had a breakthrough. Again I asked, “Do you want to receive Christ?” You guessed it! “Nope,” was his answer.

I was so frustrated and confused. I hadn’t had much experience with middle school boys, but, seriously? I just couldn’t tell if he was rebellious, pulling my leg or truly didn’t understand.

The youth minister must have seen me looking totally perplexed and helpless so he rushed over.

“Oh, Jennifer, I am so sorry!”  He whispered in my ear. “ I should have told you about him.” He reached over and hugged the young man and the boy headed back to his seat.

Okay, I was totally confused by this point. I asked the youth minister what was going on. He told me this young man was special needs — he was very high functioning, though, so it wasn’t always super obvious.

“He comes forward every time there is an invitation,” he said. “And every time, he says he wants to receive Christ, but when you ask, he always says no.”

It all made sense! I got it. The precious young man just truly didn’t understand. His heart was right, he just wasn’t capable of expressing his heart in the way I expected.

The youth minister knew the whole story — I didn’t. What had made no sense to me was completely understood by the youth minister because he had perfect knowledge of  the boy’s situation.

There are lots of situations in our lives that don’t make sense to us. We question and coax and try to fix and we can’t figure out why all we get is a big “no!”

When dreams die and despair grows and sorrow builds and hope plummets… we just want to fix it all. It makes no sense to us. But, think of it this way: when the youth minister explained what was going on, I didn’t distrust or ignore him and run back to the middle school boy to try to fix the situation. I simply trusted someone who knew more than I did. When I trusted the youth minister, I no longer tried to figure out and fix what didn’t make sense.

My friend, when we really trust God, we won’t have to try to figure out and fix what doesn’t make sense to us.

But, when we ignore Him or don’t trust Him, we spend all our time and energy trying to figure out and fix the situations in our lives that aren’t working out like we hoped.

We can stop trying to fix it.

We can lean hard on the God who knows all. We can stop trying to coax, fix, push and pull.

Can we look at all the hard things in our lives and just say, “Lord, I get it… I don’t get it! And, I don’t have to.”

Oh my friend, there is so much in life that we just don’t — and will never — understand. But, you don’t have to understand everything, you can trust the God who oversees everything. What feels out of your hands is never out of His control.

So, take a break today. You can stop trying to fix it and just focus your eyes on Jesus instead.

What are you going to hand over to God and let Him fix? Share with us in the comments below so we can pray for each other.