Have you found yourself in a situation where you were tirelessly trying to accomplish something, and you would continue to put more and more effort into it—but for whatever reason, doors keep staying closed instead of steadily cracking open? It’s almost as if the more you try, the more you seem to stagnate instead of progress?
I’m sure we’ve all been there with some situation in our life, whether it be big or small. It’s frustrating.
It could be trying to improve your golf game, yet with no luck (me).
It could be trying to finish a tedious project, yet with no end in sight.
It could be trying to complete a difficult task, yet with no breakthroughs.
It could be trying to land that desired job, yet with no traction.
It could be trying to start a business, yet with no momentum.
We’ve all been there.
I experienced this kind of thing more recently in my work as a social media manager. Namely, it was the goal of securing a highly desirable @username that had already been claimed by an unknown user. The whole process of trying to secure this @username was a miserably exhausting experience. I was forced to navigate through the muddy waters of tech support…for weeks and weeks and weeks…yet, to seemingly get nowhere.
Email, email, email.
Report, report, report.
Reclaim, reclaim, reclaim.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Let me be more specific as to what was actually going on.
One company that I do social media work for has been trying to contact the owner of a Facebook page which has been posing as the official brand. And because this account has been marketing itself as the ‘official’ Facebook page of this company, it had accrued over 65,000 likes of the company’s rightful fans and target audience. Overall, this fake account had been (illegally) stunting the marketing potential of this company for years and years. Naturally, the company had been trying to take it down since 2011. They got attorneys involved. They tried tech support as well. Yet, they got nowhere.
Corporately, the company had given up on the issue.
Personally, I had been sending multiple emails a week to this account for the past 8 months to try to establish any type of contact whatsoever. Now, I don’t know how many emails that was exactly, but it was precisely 67 emails…. with no reply. Not once.
So yes, I take the verse, “Knock and the door will be opened to you” very literally. Persistence in the biblical sense justifies annoyance in the ungodly sense, right? (…lol).
But last week, I finally gave in. I became overwhelmed by the feeling of making zero progress after so much effort. But, I decided to open Facebook messenger one more time to send just one more message with the hopes of getting their attention… and that’s when I noticed that just 30 minutes earlier that day… they had blocked me.
Blocked!
If you know how to block anyone, you’ll that takes much more time learning how to configure than a simple one-sentence response message. So, after all that striving to get in contact with them, now my only channel to communicate was effectively cut off.
In other words, if the door was closed before, now it just got bolted shut.
So now what? Game over. My 8 months of trying just went down the drain. The company’s past 5 years of trying just bit the dust. Any chance of communication was hanging by the thin thread of Facebook Messenger—and it just got snipped.
Facebook reps would even call this a lost cause at this point. If the unknown user doesn’t want to communicate, then that’s their private right. Tough cookies.
My last hope was to make a final appeal to Facebook corporate in the hopes that my ridiculous plea of an email would somehow find its way through the stormy gales of tech support and arrive safely into the inbox of the most kind and most qualified person at Facebook corporate.
Think about the story of baby Moses—being put in a basket, laid into the Nile River, dodging the alligators (I’d like to think so), and arriving safely into royalty’s hands who has compassion on him, takes him in, and raises him as their own. This may or may not be the digital equivalent of sending an email to Facebook tech support.
Indeed, if you’ve ever tried contacting Facebook support, Google support, or Twitter support before, you’ll know that 1) it’s extremely difficult to actually get in touch with anyone, and 2) the chances of your message being opened, and much less read, are virtually slim to none. Opening your message, reading your message, and deciding to do something about it? I don’t know what the odds are there.
Nevertheless, after many efforts to contact Facebook before, this email somehow successfully maneuvered its way through the labyrinth of tech support and was opened by an amazingly kind and incredibly qualified individual on the Global Marketing Solutions team.
Long story short, he read my email, sympathized with our cause, and simply made the executive decision to not only take down the fake account, but to also merge all the likes and fans of the fake account into our own official account. And he did it with one click. Done.
Now, I didn’t know that level of reconfiguring was ‘a thing’ and could technically be done. But nevertheless, he had the kindness and the power to make it happen. I’m still kind of shocked.
In a moment, this Facebook representative accomplished what I tried and failed to do over the past 8 months.
And let’s be real, if I didn’t get blocked, I probably could have tried for many more months with the same result. Things weren’t exactly looking up. But since I did get blocked, that’s when my chances pretty much flat-lined.
The kindness and qualification of the Facebook representative was literally my only hope—because only he could make something like that happen. I could only ever control the front end of Facebook. But he could control the back end of Facebook. And that made the biggest difference.
In reflecting upon that experience earlier today, it made me realize that this situation in particular portrays a fairly accurate analogue of what our relationship with God is like in general. It’s like that in terms of eternal matters, such as our salvation. And it’s like that in terms of temporal matters, such as our schooling, jobs, relationships, and other choices that affect our future. In all of it, God is working in ways for our good that we could never dream to accomplish for ourselves.
In terms of our salvation, for instance, what we couldn’t have accomplished in a thousand lifetimes, God accomplished for us in his Son. All the collective, moral merit in human history couldn’t rise up to the bar of God’s holy standard. But in a moment, he gave us the incarnated Son, who came down to us, lived among us, and offered up his holy life as a substitute for our justification. We could try all we wanted; but we wouldn’t have gotten any closer. We needed help from the back end of reality to help us on the front end of reality—otherwise we’d be hopeless.
And it works just as similarly with our non-eternal—but also very important—issues in life as well. Romans 8:32 gives us that promise precisely: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” In other words, if God has lovingly taken care of your greatest need for salvation when you were least deserving as an enemy, how much more will he lovingly provide you with much smaller needs now that you’re his beloved child? It’s a promise you can take to the bank.
Whatever you’re trying to accomplish for yourself—you might find yourself making a lot of friction, but no traction. If you’re stuck in quicksand, help isn’t ever going to come from inside of you, but from outside of you. Again, you need work done on the back end of reality to change what can’t be fixed in your own strength on the front end of reality.
In a nutshell, that was my situation with this @username dilemma. The harder I tried with the pursuit, the more I failed. I was making a lot of friction, but not traction. The situation was stuck in quicksand. It wasn’t until I got help from the back end of Facebook that I made any traction on the front end of Facebook.
Similarly, the harder we try to save ourselves with our own morality (in terms of an eternal perspective), and the more we try to manipulate our situations with our own efforts (in terms of a temporal situation), the more we will realize how destitute and unable we actually are to accomplish long-term solutions in our own ability.
But… and it’s a big but… what we couldn’t ever achieve or accomplish in an eternity, God can accomplish in a moment.
Scripture is replete with examples of this kind of narrative, too:
In Matthew 5, the woman with a bleeding problem had been to doctors for 12 years, and instead of getting better with their treatments, she actually got worse (v. 26). But we know how the story ends: what doctors couldn’t accomplish in more than a decade, God did in a moment with a simple touch.
In 2 Kings 5, Naaman had all the power and money and connections in the world, but he couldn’t cure himself of his leprosy. His efforts couldn’t heal him. But what he couldn’t accomplish on his own, God did in a moment with a dip into a dirty river.
In Matthew 14, the crowd of 5,000 couldn’t provide enough food for themselves; and they were starving. The resources were too limited. The time was too short. The people were too many. But what they couldn’t accomplish on their own, Jesus accomplished in an instant with 5 loaves and 2 fish.
In Exodus 14, as the Israelites were being mercilessly pursued by the Egyptians, they came to the dead-end of the Red Sea and had nowhere to go. There were no other routes available. There were no boats to cross the sea. There were only pursuers with swords poised to strike. But what they couldn’t accomplish on their own, God accomplished in an instant by parting the massive waters. And they crossed on dry ground.
In Genesis 37, God placed a calling on Joseph’s life to rule over many people and to save his own family. Instead, he became abandoned, rejected, enslaved, falsely accused, and forgotten. It seemed like Joseph was disabled to ever become what God had called him to be and to do. In his present state of slavery, he could have worked for a thousand lifetimes and still would have never made significant progress towards influential, political aspirations. But in the very pit of slavery, God accomplished for Joseph in a moment what Joseph could never accomplish for himself: God gave him an uncanny sense of dream interpretation that would immediately put him in 2nd of command of the entire Egyptian empire. Truly, in an instant, God accomplished for him what he could have never accomplished for himself.
And ultimately of all, when Judas betrayed Jesus, when the religious leaders convicted him, and when the Romans crucified him, it looked like all hope was gone. It looked like God’s last allowance of hope became seemingly snuffed out by human inadequacy once again. Yet, it was through this very scenario—and not in spite of it—that God accomplished in a moment what we needed most and what we could have never accomplished for ourselves in a million years.
These are just a few examples, but the biblical pattern is unbelievably clear. God works through dead-ends, through limitations, and through impossible situations to accomplish his purposes. Alleged obstacles aren’t contradicting the promise of God; in fact, they are completing the promise of God.
Are you going through a tough time right now? Are you treading in the quicksand of life? Are you making a lot of friction, but not seeming to make a lot of traction?
Well don’t stress out. That might actually mean that God is up to something particularly beautiful in your life that can’t come to pass any other way.
What we can try to accomplish in a lifetime, God can accomplish in an instant. Whatever you’re going through right now, be assured that the God who did not spare his own Son from you while you were his enemy certainly is not withholding anything good from you right now as his child.
I love what John Piper says:
“God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them.”
Or you might be aware of just 2 of them; or none of them. But you can be aware that he is working nonetheless. He’s always working on the back end of reality, programming it in such a way that the front end of your situation might look like chaos now, but always with the hope that it will change for better—and if not here on earth, then definitely in heaven.
Looking for a job? God is the ultimate CEO of the market.
Looking for a healing? God is the best doctor in the hospital.
Looking for a relationship? God is the great matchmaker of the party.
Looking for an answer? God is the best maven in the academy.
Looking for direction? God is the ultimate captain in storms of uncertainty.
I’m not saying, “don’t keep trying.” I’m saying, “don’t stop trusting.”
I’ll conclude with the lyrics of a song I can remember from the 1st grade Sunday school class. Never have they clicked with me more clearly than now:
God will make a way
Where there seems to be no way
He works in ways we cannot see
He will make a way for me
He will be my guide
Hold me closely to His side
With love and strength for each new day
He will make a way, He will make a way
