Locking Your Worries in a Box
As he sat in prison, Andrew began to be suffocated by his doubts and the questions he had of God.
He said he didn’t choose to dwell on them—they just wouldn’t escape. They kept coming to his mind because he was sitting there with nothing else.
He said, “They kept me from receiving truth and encouragement from God, the Bible, and from any source.”
Wrestling with Doubt
Then he talks about a book that he read by Don Bowman, who explained how, “After he had a great disappointment with God, he locked away his questions in an imaginary box.”
Andrew says, “I decided to do the same thing. I imagined a modern, high-tech safe with a hand scanner on the front, as well as a turn handle. God and I were the only ones able to open it. I took each of my questions and doubts and deliberately placed them in the box.
‘God,’ I prayed as I imagined myself sealing the lid shut, ‘I’m locking these questions away. I’m not going to ask them anymore. I’m not going to demand answers. I do not understand. I’m confused and I’m hurt, but these questions and doubts will remain in this box until a different time. You can open this box if You want, but I am leaving it sealed. I don’t need to know the answers in order to continue my relationship with You.’”
And so he said, from then on, whenever these questions came to mind, he would banish them back into the box.
Letting Go of Questions
I wonder how true this rings for you. I know a lot of people who are going through deep, difficult suffering at the moment.
And I know that in times like these, the moment there is any sort of silence—when you’re not busy—your mind just latches on to these struggles and tries to figure them out. It asks, wrestles, and wrestles again.
Well, maybe today you need to put all those questions and doubts in a box. You need to spend a moment with God and take all of those worries and struggles and lock them away.
Say, “Lord, I will not let these have power over me.”
Freedom Through Trust
Friends, I hate it if such wrestling suffocates your relationship with God and stops you from receiving encouragement and truth from Him.
So, will you do it? Take a few moments after this message stops to pray your way through this—perhaps to put those worries, doubts, and struggles in a box.
Andrew was helped deeply by doing this while he sat in his prison. And so, I believe, friends, that you and I will be helped greatly if we take these doubts and struggles and lock them away—and instead, focus on the good news that God has for us.
