The Failed, The Crashed, and The Broken

  I’ve been in a season lately, where a lot of things seem to be malfunctioning. I bought a new computer back in February and the movie maker program crashes every few minutes when you use it. The DVD burning software I bought refused to burn or burned with glitches. My truck failed its emissions test twice, and the washing machine has been broken for three weeks.

  Now these issues are certainly not life or death, but very inconvenient to say the least.

  Well on Tuesday afternoon, my patient endurance hit its end, another DVD had failed me and I was running out of “grace period” days to fix my truck. After unloading my frustrations on the Lord, I went out in the garage to make another attempt on fixing my truck. I stood and watched out the open garage door as my dad pulled my vehicle up the driveway. I halfheartedly began to pray that the Lord would help us just fix my truck, but in the middle of that prayer I had a thought. It’s easy to trust the Lord and follow Him when everything is going well. Then the challenge was laid before me: Do I want Him to change my circumstances? Or do I want Him to change me?

  There’s nothing wrong with praying for things to go well or things to get fixed, but in that moment my prayers were from a heart that just wanted relief or so I thought, until that question was laid before me. In that moment I made my choice, and my whole hearted prayer became, Lord, change me.

  Yesterday morning my dad and I were talking about the inconvenience our broken washer has caused, yet his response to the situation was: the Lord can use us in all things, we’d like it better if everything went smooth and we could just stay in our own little worlds… but our life is not our own.

  Yesterday all these lessons rolled around in my mind. We want a God at our disposal, the vending machine God, who when you push the right buttons He delivers. Yet… haven’t we chosen to have it the other way around? We willfully have laid our lives before Him so that we are at HIS disposal. He promises to care for us, love us, give us everything we need for this life, and so on, but does the Commander take orders from the soldier?

  Since the washer broke, several repair man have been out to our house. They have entered our home, seen our family, many service people have been called and been confronted with kindness and respect. Computer service techs have witnessed the same manner through all my busted programs.

  Our life is not our own, we’ve been bought with a price. BUT WE CHOOSE IT!!! We chose to give our lives away to Christ, we aren’t victims! Struggling under an iron fisted dictator! Not at all! We said spend me! Use me! (We just weren’t informed that it would be with washing machine repair man.)

  On Tuesday night, I backed my truck out of the garage, and took it out on a test drive. My truck had gotten so bad, it had no power. You would floor the gas and just roll forward. So as I sat at the stop light waiting to turn out, I saw an opening, I stamped on the gas and the tires spun and squealed before I zipped around the corner with power. I had to hold back from speeding! The next day I took it in for my emissions test and passed! I was so excited I wanted to tape the paper in the window so that everyone would know, I PASSED!!! If it hadn’t been for emissions testing, I wouldn’t have gotten my car fixed until we changed the engine, if it weren’t for the frustration, I would have never felt the pure joy of a simple thing.

  Choosing to follow Christ, doesn’t mean our lives will be smooth and trouble free, but a life without Christ is like a vehicle with no power, a washing machine that won’t wash clothes, or a DVD burner that won’t burn. They are worthless, because they cannot perform the tasks for which they were created.

  My life is not my own, and how thankful I am! Life can be frustrating sometimes, but I have confidence that because of Christ in me and I Him, every day of my life, every moment, is useful and no situation is wasted.  

…Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.

Luke 11:2