When faced with a trial (storm), how do you handle it? Think of the recent storms and all the evidence you have seen, now picture it was you in all that mess. How would you handle it? Cry and give up? Step up and start the work? Give God some credit?
I recently went to the mountains near the destruction, not actually going to the area, but near enough to see the road closed signs in the distance. My heart has always been in Asheville since I was a teenager when I first visited the Biltmore. Oh the rooms I could have hid in growing up in a place like that. The overwhelming feeling of dreams shattered has my spiritual gift of mercy in overdrive. "What could I do to help?" turned into "What if it was me?" How do you rebuild when a natural disaster destroys so much of the area around you?
And then, we strated driving home. We had been on the road maybe an hour when my phone rang. I talk to our contractor often, so no bells had gone off. I mean we have been remodeling our kitchen for 2 months and the day was appraoching that we would be able to start unpacking our stored belongs. And then the words came across the speaker, "Um, I don't know how to tell you this, but we have a problem." It would seem a nut on a water connection sheered in half when no one was home.
My floors had been sanded and stained, sealed and beautiful for only a week when this small nut gave way. My kitchen was all but complete until this small nut gave way. My kitchen cabinets were ready to be used until...you get the picture. A small nut caused the following damage: floors in the kitchen, laundry room, and dining room (which was not part of the remodel) all need to be replaced. It flooded the HVAC system. The duct work in the basement is in half with the insulation hanging down, which all needs to be replaced. And it flooded my basement.
The horror of hearing my basement had flooded is enough to make my knees buckle. For those that have never seen my basement, it is full of boxes which contain the reminants of my family's lives. Memories all stored in boxes that I have been emotionally unable to sort through. I had a plan once the kitchen was complete, we would start the process.
I drove up to the house and saw vehicles parked everywhere and at the bottom of my drive was what looked like a yard sale. My things were everywhere trying to dry out. I walked down the hill and stood there looking at all those things on the ground. Overwhelmed but determined to get to work. In about an hour I discovered I no longer wanted most of what what there. The trash heap grew. Then the contruction crew took two basement size rooms and shoved them into one side of the garage.
Spritual warfare sometimes comes along in the shape and size of a small irrelevant nut. But that nut served a purpose, it held everything together. Without the nut, basically the dam broke. Why did the nut break now? My devotional is currently being edited. I received the first ten days of edits back. The enemy wants to steel, kill, and destroy, we all know this, right? That is his job. My book is going to be a powerful testimony for God's kingdom. The enemy wants to keep it from happening.
God used a small simple nut to remind me where my faith should be. A mustard seed or a nut, both are tools for God. The nut was pivotal in holding back a flood. My faith needed a bit of testing in order to create a better devotional. I could have allowed the flood to derail the edits, it would have been a natural choice. However, I felt God prompting me to go work on the edits. I have the faith of a mustard seed at times, and also the size of the mountain at others. I needed the smallness of my faith in the moment of the flood because I could see who caused the flood.
"Jesus says, "Truly I tell you, if you have faith of as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there," and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." Mattew 17:20
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