Devotional
Embracing the Lean Times
There is a tipping point in your relationship with the Lord where you decide you are going to trust Him regardless of what life throws at you. I’m not exactly sure when that happened for me, but it has happened. It is the only way this type ‘A’ personality could let go of absolute control of my life and the situations I find myself part of.
I think back to how I would have reacted to the circumstances of my life, especially the last few weeks, before I walked with the Lord daily. I believe I would be an emotional wreck and highly suspect my team would have quit or would really be thinking about it. Yep, I could be that person! I am glad I’m not and I’m sure they are too.
Understanding Our Own Calling
A few weeks back I was listening to a message by Steven Furtick from Elevation Church in Charlotte, NC. This was part 2 of his “Crash the Chatterbox” series. In a portion of the message Furtick was talking about how God sees us as individuals with individual talents and specific abilities unique to who we are. At one point, He made a statement that was what I term as a ‘wow’ moment, “We judge our abilities against some elses calling.”
Throughout my life I’ve measured who I was by the standards of a given church, group, association or the world’s view. Instead of understanding my own abilities and the uniqueness of who I am, I strived to meet standards I was never meant to attain. I remember a statement a friend made when talking about how the military grooms leaders. He said, “They teach and train us like every officer will be the next chief of staff. This way the cream will rise to the top and those individuals will be the ones chosen for positions of authority.”
Resolving the Ownership Issue
Pride goes before the fall. I can’t remember exactly when I first heard that quote, but it has proven true. The actual scripture is from Proverbs 16:17-18 “17 The highway of the upright avoids evil; those who guard their ways preserve their lives. 18 Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Arrogance and boastful pride are two things I do my best to guard against. I have watched a haughty spirit destroy churches, business, racing organizations and successful people. At some point people think they are all that and a bag of chips. This is when they will falter and fall.
Treasures in Darkness
Releasing ownership of my life to the Lord has been one of the hardest task for me to do. I really was afraid He would wreck it. Imagine that, thinking your Father, who loves you more than words can express, would do something to cause you long term harm. Yes, we experience short term pain when life happens and things go awry, but looking back we can see that those difficulties mold us into the person the Lord wants us to become.
The past few weeks have been difficult at times and down right frustrating at others. The attack of the enemy against are team has gotten laughable. Yesterday the generator problem returned on unit 2. You can imagine how I felt, I’m home getting ready to leave for North Carolina and they are in Alabama. There was nothing I could do. Besides, I had just found my refrigerator was not cooling properly, so I had my own issues to deal with.
The Black Hole
The other day, when I was getting the axle seal replaced on the Kings Coach, I had the chance to talk with an couple team driving an expediter truck. It seems they have been through the ringer of late with accidents, breakdowns and a variety of other maladies. It was amazing how much stuff had happened to them over the course of a few years. I sat in awe of the stories they told. How could this much happen to 2 people in a short span of time? While good natured in their conversation, you could tell the troubles were weighing on them heavily.
At no time did either of them give me any indication they had a relationship with Jesus. Having been through a few ‘fires’ in my life, I could not imagine doing so without the Lord at my side. Troubles will come in life, how we deal with them is up to us. Yes, we must face difficult realities when trouble strikes, but having a relationship with our Father makes all the difference in how we handle them and our perspective moving forward.
Making Adjustments
I arrived home about 11:20 last night after a short stay at the Tag Truck Center medium duty Freightliner shop yesterday morning. I caught the leaking seal in time and prevented damaging the brake shoes on that wheel assembly. Sure am glad I had that exhaust leak, which is fixed by the way.
All of my fears from the weekend were put to rest with that last stop on my way back for a 48 hour ‘quick turn’ at home. The generator is running great in unit 2, everything is working well on unit 1. Life is good.
Peace-A Weapon Against Satan
When I first retired from the military in January of 2004, I worried about how we would pay our bills. I had received a paycheck every 2 weeks for over 28 and a half years. I was use to having a certain amount of money to not only pay my bills, but extra to ‘play’ with as I saw fit. That included paying my tithe.
When I retired, we instantly went into a $1000 a month deficit. We have always been blessed with the support of friends and families for the ministry, but just how we’d pay everything was beyond my comprehension. It would take several months before I would start to understand the Lord was my provider, not the government or the church or anyone else.
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