The God Box!

Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go. He’s the one who will keep you on track. Don’t assume that you know it all. Proverbs 3:5-6 from The Message

A while ago, I was gifted a small box with the words, God Box, engraved on the top. It is a tiny box with a thin slot on the top to receive small pieces of paper. I have to admit that I had never seen one of these before, and I didn’t fully understand their purpose at the time.

A God Box is a physical container used as a spiritual tool to surrender worries, fears, and things you can’t control to God. You take a piece of paper, write your worry or fear on it, fold it up, and slip the paper into the slot on top. Once they are in the box, they are God’s problem, not ours.

The God Box I received was made by a friend’s father. He made them specifically for the homeless and recovering alcoholics in order to give them a way to turn all their problems over to God. This box makes it possible to admit those worries and fears and trust God to take care of them.

It might sound a little impossible, but it works, at least for me. I am a fixer. A worrier. I’ve never been able to just let things go. I want to play God sometimes, but every time I do, things go wrong.

This plain ordinary, God Box, reminds me to put my faith in God, and not in myself. Randy’s grandmother loved to talk about leaving all her burdens at the altar at church when she kneeled to pray. However, she said when she left, she picked them all up again.

Some God Boxes have a lid which can be lifted up, and one can look at the prayers that have been written, see if they’ve been answered, and decide whether to leave things alone or try to fix those prayers not yet answered.

My God box is unique because the lid does not open, so there is no way of retrieving the prayers I wrote and put inside. When I put my prayer in, I know I have to leave it there. I can’t take it physically back unless I want to destroy the box.

Most of our stress in life is caused by our need to be in control. Even after we pray and supposedly turn our problems over to God, we have trouble trusting him to handle it. I wonder how many of us put our money in the bank one morning and then stay up all night worrying about it?! We are confident that the bank will take care of our investment. God deserves our confidence that He will handle things.

Sometimes we find ourselves in a downward spiral asking, How? When? What? Where? It is in these moments, that we need to stop and hand it all over to God. Not the limited God that we sometimes think He is, but the unlimited God whose track record speaks for itself. The God whose faithfulness never fails, and the God who has earned the right to ask, “Is anything too hard for me?”

God has promised to take care of us. All we need to do is turn it all over to Him.

Make your petition deep, O heart of mine. Your God can do much more than you ask; Launch out on the Divine, Draw from His love-filled store. Trust Him with everything, begin today. And find the joy that comes when Jesus has His way. Author Unknown