Is Oil Choking Your Faith?

Are you weary of the daily news onslaught relating to the Gulf's oil spill? Looking at any media lately, it's nearly impossible to escape some sort of update or opinion about the Gulf's oil spill and its damage to the environment or BP's latest idea to stop the leaks. You can even look at a live video feed of the oil-spewing leaks a mile under water. Searching for "oil spill" produces hundreds of results. Here are just a few of today's headlines:

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• Oil spill, are they doing enough?
• Obama seeks 'full and vigorous accounting' of Gulf Coast oil spill
• Will the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Hurt Tourism in the South?
• Spill wipes $23 billion off BP‎
• In Louisiana, damage from the oil spill can be deceiving‎
• Gulf oil spill: 'Everybody's lost hope'‎ - USA Today
• Gulf oil spill has BP in crosshairs of AG Eric Holder
• BP Shares Under Deeper Pressure
• BP Needs 'Lottery Win' to Seal Oil Leak at First Try
• Relief for Gulf is 2 months away with another well‎
• Alabama coast could see oil Wednesday‎
• BP CEO Tony Hayward (VIDEO): 'I'd Like My Life Back'

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Searching for "oil spill prayer" offers half the results but more than expected. One article reminds the reader how God can change the laws of nature. When a builder loses his borrowed ax in water, the prophet Elisha throws a stick into the water and the axe floats.

Another article mentions how Louisiana churches are stepping up to help with prayers and food those whose livelihoods are being impacted.

The Episcopal Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast has created a website to share information about the oil spill.

Another article titled "God is bigger than this oil spill" captures how many are feeling in a church member's quote: "There is a helplessness that comes with it...Right now, there is very little we can do."

Indeed, there is little we can do. Yet, we still try. Every day, headlines seem to speak to this helplessness and increasing anger. While projections were made from the first week of when oil would arrive on shores and destroy wildlife, the Obama Administration has continued to keep its "boot on the throat of BP" to pressure them to resolve this crisis and threaten them with lawsuits.

Such arrogance.

Isaiah 55:8-9 says: 'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' says the LORD. 'For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.' 


I challenge you, myself, and even our President to reflect on this Scripture. God is still in control. This oil spill did not surprise Him. This crisis will not destroy His creation of the Earth. Just as with the hammer that floated on water, He is capable of much that we cannot understand or see.

Our responsibility to God is to obey Him, to trust Him, and to submit to His will, whether we understand it or not. Thus, we've hit on the trifecta of our issues. Obedience, trust, and submission are three of our most difficult challenges. But with God's help, we can learn to obey, trust, and submit. In doing so, we will become stronger and wiser instead of weaker and ignorant.

Instead of criticizing BP, supporting that we never drill for oil, fretting that the coasts will be ruined and wildlife become extinct, take a moment and stop. Remember Who created it all. Remember that God truly is bigger than this oil spill and pray that He grants wisdom, discernment, and protection for those involved, and that through this crisis God will be glorified.

"Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." (2 Corinthians 12:8-10)