Crash! Topple! Bang! Those are the sounds that usually greeted me almost every time I ventured into our garage. Some overfilled box or bulging container always seemed to get knocked over or slide off a precarious stack somewhere. The clutter had even reached the point where it was difficult to get our van to fit properly, and even when I could manage to get in far enough, the car door often bumped into part of the collection of miscellaneous items that had slowly congregated on the floor between our vehicles. Yea, you could say our garage was long overdue to be cleaned!
So recently, my husband, Clif, took advantage of a lull in the cold winter weather and spent time sorting, stacking, rearranging and throwing a lot of stuff away. In the process of organizing, he actually amassed a fairly large conglomeration of useful things that needed to be relocated. Herding them into a nice neat mound in the center of the my parking space, he intended for our four kids to finish the last bit of the project by moving the salvaged items to their new home in the basement. After calling out instructions about where to put everything, he left to attend to other tasks.
As you might have guessed, the kids didn’t exactly leap out to the garage. In fact, it didn’t get done at all that day… or the next … or the next. More insistent instructions were given… again without compliance. Another few days passed … then a week.
By the time the third week of parking my van in the driveway and stepping around the pile came and went, I decided a different approach was in order. Instead of directing them to go and do the job themselves, I asked them to join me in the relocation project. It was amazing. There was no stalling, no complaining, no resisting. In less than 45 minutes, the pile was moved and my van was back in the garage with plenty of walking space all around…. and I even had a few laughs with my kids in the process!
As I went into the house to hang up my keys, it occurred to me that I was glad Jesus didn’t just lay out a list of assignments and send me to do them alone. Instead, when there’s a task to be done, He invites me join Him in accomplishing the work together!
In his foundational book, Experiencing God, Henry Blackaby says “The Lord doesn’t send us off like an errand boy. He intends to accompany us on the journey. He wants us to continually heed His voice and go with Him one day at a time. As long as we walk daily with Christ, we will always … end up where He wants us to be.”
That’s a whole different way of looking at our relationship with the Lord than most believers have. He doesn’t expect us to do anything by ourselves. In fact, He knows that even with our best efforts, we are unable to achieve anything of lasting eternal value. That’s because truly spiritual things can only be accomplished through the power of and in harmony with the Spirit of God.
So if you’ve been avoiding obligations and responsibilities that feel too big for you to move on your own, stop procrastinating! Take the Lord’s hand and tackle the work together! You’ll do a better job with Him than you can ever do alone, and you might find you enjoy it more in the process!
About Karen
I was practically born in church in a small town in North Carolina. I went to Vacation Bible School and was in the children’s Christmas play every year. When I was older, I went to youth (actually I was 1/5 of the whole youth group,) and was at every lock-in and service project. With that as my background, my spiritual maturity quickly blossomed once I gave my life fully to Jesus Christ in my 20s. A few years later, I moved to Atlanta and began to attend a strong Bible teaching church that encouraged my commitment and challenged me to walk in godliness. But, it wasn’t long until I hit a spiritual plateau. I knew a lot of truth, but there existed an unsettling undercurrent that told me there HAD to be something more to Christianity than going to church, and trying hard to live right.
It was later that I discovered that ‘more’ I was looking for is actually God Himself. He longs for us to come to know Him in a fashion that moves us way beyond what passes for ‘normal’ Christianity into a deep relationship of love. Through my writings, it’s my desire to share my journey with the hope of helping you see your life in the context of God’s story and to realize that He’s purposefully at work in every ‘switchback’ (those big and small direction changes in life) to draw you more deeply into His heart.
