The pastor should walk in his own message.
The sovereignty of God can express itself in small ways, too. If you believe God is in charge of major world events and the confused, swirling currents of human politics, it’s no problem to see Him in control of small things, as well. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not a blessing in disguise.
I’ve spent some years of my life shedding that Teutonic rage my earthly father taught me. He’s not an evil man, just limited like we all are. You can only share what you know, and he doesn’t know a whole lot about the moral standards of God. While I may not be much smarter, I am surely trying to be different, if only by reason of not doing to others the things I hated him doing to me. So I’ve been quite conscious of anger and wrath and struggled to put them where they belong.
Scripture says be angry but don’t sin. Anger has a place, but most folks have no idea where it is. You can’t simply deny it or it will kill you. Find out where it comes from and decide how the Lord intends you to handle it.
There was a time I really liked working on motor vehicles. Maybe I was never too good at it, but when you are poor, you do what you can. Once or twice folks seemed impressed with what I knew, so it couldn’t have been too bad. Most of the time I worked in solitude because I was embarrassed at how vitriolic my anger could be when things didn’t work as I expected.
I knew God was sovereign and blew up at Him when something didn’t go as I wanted. Did it risk my eternal status in Heaven? Hardly. It only kept me from His peace and the blessings of His moral standards. From where I sit today, it’s a long string of vehicles and many hours doing major surgery on them, and none of it really mattered. It only seemed to matter at the time.
Certain aspects of things breaking down just never were acceptable to the mind of flesh. God was so very patient with my silly tantrums.
This past week our only vehicle broke down again. I knew what it was, more or less — saw it coming — and had a good idea how to fix it. I had been praying about it and decided I could deal with losing it, even if it hurt current planning. It chose to die at the moment when I had sufficient donations to pay for the least expensive means of recovery. We ordered the part via PayPal. During the wait for arrival, we made do without it.
It was not a simple fix, and I had to step away some hours at a time. My skills and ability to grasp modern vehicle wiring is really poor. Further, I no longer really enjoy working on vehicles. Eventually it worked okay.
A neighbor I knew was mechanically savvy came home and I jokingly whined about it. He saw the humor in my jest, but at the same time he was helping his wife out of the vehicle after a visit to the emergency room. I felt like a real jerk when I realized what was going on with them. Nonetheless, he good-naturedly offered some advice that made a lot of sense.
So I used his idea, but it was another big passel of work. It’s okay now. Not as good as new, but appears functional. Better, it was affordable within our means. Best of all, I never got infuriated. I just kept waiting and praying until I was at peace with the results. That was far more important than getting that old Jeep working again.
Physician, heal thyself.
