Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5
“This will be the easiest home repair job I’ve ever done!”
I am replacing a handle on the bedroom door…
Simple, right?
Remove the two screws holding the old door handle in place…
Slide the the new handle into the hole in the door…
Tighten the screws and…done.
It took less than two minutes.
The door handle works…
I step back and looked at it.
Something is wrong…
The lever on the handle is upside down.
No problem…
I’ll just remove the screws and put the handle on the other way…
Uh-oh… now the door handle points in the wrong direction.
Two minutes turn into thirty as I ponder this seemingly imponderable problem.
“Would it be so bad,” I ask my wife, “if the handles were upside down?”
She laughs and gives me a look …
“Just Kidding!” I reply.
Then I utter the well-known cry of male surrender and defeat…
“Guess I’ll look at the directions!”
The directions yielded the answer…
The job takes even less than two minutes.
“Looks good.” my wife says.
“An easy job,” I reply.
How much easier the job would have been if only I had read the directions first…
But to my male ego, that’s an act of surrender…
Surrender means defeat.
Who wants to admit defeat?
Maybe that’s why I tackle so many really big projects in my life without asking for God’s direction and wisdom…
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. James 1:5
Without reading His instruction manual…
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness…2 Timothy 3:16
If only I could remember that surrendering to God doesn’t lead to defeat.
It leads to the greatest victory of all…
…thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:57
