Well of course.

I had a conversation with a friend of mine last night.  She was telling me about how she was trying to help her friend fight through her depression.  She admittted that she was struggling because the problem was too big for her to handle.

Well of course.

And I mean that in the most comforting way.  We should take great joy in knowing that our problems-about co-workers, our health, paying next month's rent-are far too big for us.  They will swallow us up if we don't do something about them.  But what can we do? 

We can pray.  And like Max Lucado suggests in the fifteenth chapter of Outlive Your Life, we should "pray first; pray most".  More than planning it out or reasoning it out or number crunching it out we should pray it out.  Because if we can do it all on our own then what do we need God for anyway?  If we are self-sufficing beings, controlling when we die and how we die and never have to sweat over bills, or the treadmill for that matter, then we don't need a mediator between us and Heaven.  If we can get there ourselves then Jesus doesn't matter. But we can't.

And poverty in Africa is too big of a problem.  Poverty in your own town is too big of a problem.  And your attitude towards your negletful father is too big of a problem.  You can't handle it.  But there is power in prayer, and the Lord hears us when we speak.  Isn't that the solution?  That the God who actually made the universe also has control over it, also knows your inner being enough to carry you through the hard, overwhelming stuff when you call on him?  Couldn't he do that?  Doesn't he do that?

Well of course.