There Are Some Things That Only God Can Do

There are some things that only God can do.  That used to irritate me.  It made me feel powerless, frustrated and defeated.  If I didn't see the results I wanted to see, I thought it was because I had failed or done something wrong.  

I thought maybe I wasn't pushing hard enough.  

I thought maybe I just don't have what it takes.

Then I realized... I'm saying "I" a lot... an awful lot...

There is an amazing young girl I've had the privilege of walking through life with for quite some time now.  She has suffered from severe depression, self-harm, addiction and more.  I remember starting off with her telling me how she doesn't believe in God, she hates Christians, and she doesn't want to waste her time talking about anything pertaining to either of these.  I agreed.

Yup, I agreed with the atheist.  

If she didn't want to talk about God or faith or Christianity, then I agreed that we shouldn't talk about God or faith or Christianity.  I suggested that we talk about the things she does want to talk about.  The things that hurt her or bother her; the things that consume her thoughts and emotions throughout the day.  So we did just that.  We didn't talk about God or faith or Christianity.  We talked about pain, suffering, and loss.  We talked about disappointment, betrayal, and self-hatred.  We talked about hope, or the lack thereof.  We talked about the cuts on her legs and what they represented.  We talked about the guy that broke her heart and the parents that let her down.  We talked about her mistakes and all the ways she felt she would never measure up.  

It's funny though.  After quite some time of not talking about God or faith or Christianity, my favorite atheist started to sneak them into the conversation.  Somehow when we talked about pain, suffering and loss, a piece of her nodded back in God's direction - maybe with an edge, or a bitter remark, but there it was: desire.  Slowly, in letting her be 'where she was' at the moment, we gravitated closer and closer to matters of...dare we say it... God.  

When she finally opened the door for us to discuss Him, to get tangled in all our questions and misunderstandings, to go ahead and just accuse Him of all that she wanted to... I found myself a little irritated actually.  Not with her, but with me.  I didn't have answers for her.  We'd been dealing with this stuff for a really long time now.  Why was she still so depressed?  Why did she keep struggling with the same old things over and over and over again?  Why did she hate herself so much, no matter what I did to help her?  Why am I not able to fix this girl?

Why am I not able to fix this girl?

Because I am not able to fix this girl.

Because there are some things that only God can do.

For the next 6 months or so, this young girl spent week after week diving into questions with me, searching through her issues with God.  She'd open up to Him, then slam the door shut all over again.  I ultimately found myself saying that phrase to her multiple times: "________, there are just some things that only God can do."  I hesitated to say it, because it felt cliche; it felt like, "words, words, words," - meaningless words.  But it was true, and I knew it, and at the end of our painful searching my soul settled in the knowledge that there are just some things that only God can do.  

We can go so far together and make lots of headway and improvements, but it's true: there are some things that only God can do...and I am not Him.  It was as if in telling her, I was really telling myself, "Tara, you can't 'fix' this girl.  You are never going to single-handedly make her life better.  You are not her solution.  These things you think you can recover for her - they're really not about you.  There are just some things that only God can do."

I knew it was true.  I said it because I believed it.  I usually said it with a crack in my voice, holding back tears.  I usually said it while praying painfully in my own heart, "Do it, Jesus.  Please, do it.  Do what only You can do - bring her back to life."  

I don't know when it happened.  Neither she nor I could tell you an exact date or moment when He did it, but somewhere along the way, she chose to believe.  She chose to open her heart and let Him heal all those things that we could not.  Her self-hatred has been banished by the 'intolerable compliment' of the relentless love of Christ, and she is coming alive in Him.  

So as I watched yet another gloriously ordinary instance of surrender in this young girl recently, God spoke to my heart, "Tara, didn't I tell you?  There are some things that only I can do."  I realized not only did she need Him to do these things in her, but I desperately needed to be reminded that He is still capable of doing what I think is impossible.


He is still fully capable of redeeming the "least likely to succeed" among us - the ones we've written off, the ones we've decided are just never going to change... and that is really, really good news for me, too.

He's still fully capable.

There are still some things that only He can do.

Somehow tonight, I don't find that so irritating anymore.  I find that relieving, and I am asking Him more and more to do what only He can do in my life and in the world around me.  I'm finding with David that it's true: "God made my life complete when I opened the book of my heart to His eyes" (Ps. 18:20).

There are just some things that only God can do.  

(And that is good).