Have you ever gotten angry over a gift? It sounds strange, but sometimes a gift can feel too simple, too easy, almost insulting. We expect a grand gift by the person presenting it. That feeling betrays us because what we are saying is that we’ve earned the gift. This approach very much mirrors how we approach God in prayer. When we come to God with our biggest problems, we often bring a script with us, a clear idea of how He should act. But when God ignores our script and offers a solution to our prayers, we get angry and our pride is offended.

When you have a serious problem, where is the first place you turn? If your car breaks down, you call a mechanic. If you have a legal issue, you hire a lawyer. We are trained to take our problems to the right expert. But what about the problems that are deeper? The ones that keep us up at night, the guilt, the broken relationship, the gnawing emptiness. We often treat these the same way, pulling out our human toolkit of money, connections, and self-help, hoping to find the right expert. But what happens when we take a God-sized problem to a human address?

Have you ever looked at someone's life, on social media or even from a distance and thought, "They have it all together"? They have the career, the perfect family, the success. It all looks so polished. But we all know that life is more complicated than that. Every one of us, no matter how impressive our resume, has a secret battle. There's always a "but." "She's a brilliant executive, but her marriage is falling apart." "He's a star athlete, but he's crippled by anxiety." Today, we’re looking at a man in the Bible who was the definition of success, yet he had a devastating ‘but.’