The Toolbox and the Wheelbarrow
The weather has been absolutely gorgeous these past few days. Yesterday we went to our local lawn and garden store to get bags of mulch. The store was jam packed with people buying flowers and plants, topsoil, mulch, decking materials, new weed whackers, anything and everything needed to do some work around the yard to get it ready for summer. As we put down our mulch, occasionally dodging an errant golf ball or two, a neighbor was planting flowers, and down the street someone else was power washing their house.
Maybe today you plan to work outdoors. Regardless of the work you plan to do, you need tools, and not just any tools, but the proper tools, to complete the project. Take for example, if you are finishing up that new wooden deck you have been working on for weeks, your toolbox probably has both hand tools and power tools. Or maybe, like me, you leave building projects to the professionals, and you will be working in your flower beds. In this case, hopefully your wheelbarrow has a trowel, shovel, soil cultivator, hoe, dibber, and a watering can. [If you are a gardener, you know what a dibber is. If not, then Google it.]
[As I sit out on my back patio writing this post, the golf course grounds crew is hard at work, all on different pieces of equipment, each intended to do a specific function, getting the course beautifully manicured for today’s golfers. Each person is using the proper equipment to do his intended function. Imagine what the course would look like if the guy on the lawn mower used that to smooth out the sand traps.]
Having and using the proper tools and implements helps make the job easier. You make them work for you. We often view the Bible in that same way; seeing it as some sort of spiritual toolbox. We want to take things out of Scripture and make them work for us, just like those carpentry or gardening tools. However, we do not use Scripture, but, instead, God uses Scripture to change us and carry out His will and His plan in and through us.
The process of becoming more like Jesus means that we come before God, who becomes present to us in and through the Bible. And, it is through His Word that we begin to be transformed. Hebrews 4:12-13 tells us that the Bible is what we are to use to calibrate, measure, and judge our thoughts and attitudes. We read, “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all of creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
In The Message, the contemporary rending of the Bible written by Eugene Peterson, the words of Jesus read like this – “You have your heads in your Bibles, constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And I here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want” (John 5:39-40).
So, are you allowing God to use His Word to continually retool and remanufacture you?