Stupified

I've been reading Jonathan Edwards on Knowing Christ, a collection of sermons by Jonathan Edwards, and came across this passage from the sermon "God Makes Men Sensible of Their Misery":

There is much in your own heart, which tends to stupify you. It is the natural tendency of sin and lust, to stupify the conscience. And as corruption is reigning as yet in your heart, it will ever be ready to exert itself in such acts, as will have a great tendency to drive away your convictions. And Satan is doubtless diligently watching over you, striving in all ways to abate, and to take off, your convictions. He joins in with the sloth and lusts of your heart to persuade to negligence, and to turn your mind to other things. And the world is full of objects, which tend to take off your mind from the soul’s concern, and are constantly, as it were, endeavouring to take possession of your mind, and to drive out the concerns of another world.

Now the context of this passage deals with unbelievers coming to Christ and how they are distracted and pulled away by various things, but it struck me how applicable it is to Christians too. Two points I see worth dwelling on:

1. Sin deadens your spiritual senses, leaving you to walk blind and deaf in the world. The Spirit is unlikely to be heard when you've stopped up your ears because of sin.

2. There are lots of good (or not bad) things in this world that can distract us from the important matter of spiritual growth. I've found this many times myself lately when I feel I should be studying or reading something, but choose to watch TV instead. We can turn a "good" thing into a "bad" thing if we choose it instead of the things we know God want us to do.

Sightings

On Sunday, pastor Bob asked if anyone would like to share how God has been in control when you thought there was no other way. I don't have the wording right, but you get the idea. He was looking for people to share some recent events where God was working behind the scenes or provided in unexpected ways. It didn't even have to be recent. Just SHARE darn it! So he passed the mic around. I was actually trying really hard to think of something, because I knew there had been, but it wasn't coming to me. And, I didn't want to go with some stupid baseball story, even thought sports analogies can be easy slam dunks. Oops, I just used a sports analogy.

Unfortunately, what I wanted to share didn't pop into my head until halfway through his sermon. At that point, I was really hoping I could get a second shot but figured that opportunity was over, until next time. So, that got me to thinking. I really need to keep some type of God Sightings log to help remember better. So, here goes:

Sometime in February or March I started to hear a loud noise coming from the hood of my car when I'd be driving down the road, especailly above 55 mph. It kind of concerned me, but it had been going on for some time and nothing had happened. Finally one night I decided to have my car buddy who has done some work in the past on my car take a look, more like a listen, while the car was running. I knew Mandy and my family were going to be using my car for the weekend to drive up to Boyne for some skiing. It was going to be at least a 3 hour drive. This was a Thursday night and I asked him, "What if, hypothetically speaking, we were to drive this car for the weekend...oh, I don't know, 3 hours and then back, what would happen?" To me, the sound of "things" in the engine made me nervous to travel a long distance, let alone 3 hours to the middle of nowhere up north, so I wanted his opinion. He thought it was the alternator going bad.

Nathan: "John, do you think the alternator will make it, or should we keep the car home?
He said what many mechanics probably say: "Sure." In other words, who knows!

Well, we made the trip back on Sunday and didn't have a single problem. And yes, the engine didn't sound any better. What a miracle. (Maybe because it was Easter weekend?!?!)

Fast forward to Wednesday morning of that week (three days later). Fritz, Barrigar, Ross and I were all doing our usual men's breakfast at McDonalds at 7am. It was getting time to go so I started my car and wanted Ross and Fritz to take a look at the engine. The engine was not sounding very good that morning and I wanted their thoughts on what the problem could be. They were convinced it was the alternator.

I got in the car and started to pull away. All of a sudden my car started smoking. White smoke was coming out of the hood! I pulled back into my parking space and Matt emphatically suggested I shut off the car. We popped the hood and the alternator had gotten so hot, it burned the fan belt next to it and snapped it like a rubberband.

My car died. At McDonalds. (This is the second time I've had a car die on me at the McDonald's in Cass City.)

Certainly I was frustrated at first. But then it hit me: This is exactly what I expected to happen, but definately didn't want to happen while we were 3 hours away from home in the middle of nowhere. God was absolutely watching and it was all in His timing. I've got nothing to complain about because it would be a much worse situation stranded up north. Whew!