"Daddy Could You Fix This?"

“Daddy could you fix this?” were the words my young son blurted out to his father after dinner one night.

It was many years ago and he couldn’t have been more then eight but I remember it vividly. It wasn’t the question that stood out but the attitude in the asking. After expressing his need, he confidently went about his business with the full assurance that it would be done.

What was his request? After declaring that his remote control for his video game was broken he was asking his father to fix it. When his dad replied that he didn’t know how, my son confidently replied “just take it apart and put it back together.”

You can’t really picture the humor of this request unless you know my husband. While he is very gifted in many areas in his life, taking things apart and putting them back together is not his forte.

After my son ran off, my husband turned to me with a look of astonishment mingled with frustration on his face and said “Does he really think I can do that?”

My reply came simply “Aren’t you glad that he believes that you can?”

I think that this is the way we are to approach our heavenly father. We sometimes come to Him in prayer thinking that we are supposed to know the ‘how’ to the answer. While much confidence can come from knowing God’s will in a matter and praying it through, I think the peace that passes all understanding that is meant to happen when we pray, comes from firmly knowing to whom we are asking it of and not the how of it being accomplished.

"Daddy could you fix this?"

In the book of Job, we find a man who endured great suffering. Much of the book he spends defending his righteousness before his friends. It is in chapter 38 that God comes to Job and speaks to him. Now you would think that He comes to him speaking kind, compassionate gentle words. You be the judge by reading the opening verses,

“Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm. He said: ‘Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’” (Job 38:1-2)

God begins to challenge Job’s meager wisdom and overwhelms him with His majesty and mystery with questions like:
- “Where were you when I laid the earths’ foundation?” (38:4)
- “Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb?” (38:8)
- “Have you ever given orders to the morning and shown the dawn its place” (38:12)
- “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail” (38:22)
- “Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades? Can you loose the cords of Orion?” (38:31)
- “Do you send the lightening bolts on their way? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?” (38:35)

Job chapters 38-41 are compelling reading if one finds themselves in need a spiritual attitude adjustment. No chapters of scripture put me in a posture of humility as quickly as these do while at the same time reviving my holy reverence for God. After God’s firm rebuke, Job replies “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted…Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.” Job 42:1-3

I believe that is the attitude that God can show Himself mightily through. We don’t need to know how God is going to answer something, just that He can. I wonder if our limited answers in prayer come from our limited perception of who we believe Him to be.

"Daddy could you fix this?"

My son had no idea how his dad would fix that remote control but he certainly had confidence in the one he was asking. When we come to God we don’t need to know how He is going to take care of the matter just that He can.

“The ability of God is beyond our prayers, beyond our largest prayers! I have been thinking of some of the petitions that have entered into my supplication innumerable times. What have I asked for? I have asked for a cupful, and the ocean remains! I have asked for a sunbeam, and the sun abides? My best asking falls immeasurably short of my Father’s giving; it is beyond that we can ask.”
John Henry Jowett