Thought of the Day 09.03.09

This morning, I decided to give my back yard its quarterly mowing. When I primed the mower and tried starting it, nothing happened. This didn’t surprise me, since it had been sitting so long. So I pulled again. Nothing. Several more tries, same result.

Annoyed, I went through every point of maintenance I could think of. I checked the oil, cleaned the air filter, added gas even though it wasn’t empty, spun the blade manually to make sure it wasn’t stuck, and even sanded the spark plug prongs. After all this, I first dry pulled and then primed and pulled to no avail.

Exasperated, it occurred to me to pray. This seemed silly, but I was reminded of Peter filling his boat with fish after Jesus told him to try once more. So, touching the handle, I started to bless the mower. God told me to touch the engine itself, so I complied and blessed it to function properly in Jesus’s name. “Prime again?” I asked. “Yes,” He answered. I pumped twice. “One more,” He said. Okay.

Expecting disappointment, I pulled on the chord one time, and the mower exploded into life and ran like a champion.
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3 comments:

Unknown said...

I know this is an older thought, but I was curious... how do you know that it's the Lord speaking to you? That might be a good show topic, anyways.

One reason I'm interested is I went through a very devastating divorce recently, and one of the issues is my ex had some psychological problems where she was "listening" to the Lord's voice, and it was telling her to do some real wacky stuff, even theologically wrong and unbiblical.

September 9, 2009 at 12:47 PM
Andrew Tallman said...

It's not that old of a thought. =)

I think that's a great question, especially since some people believe that God doesn't even speak directly to people outside of the Bible these days. They are called cessationists. I will see if there's any way I can do this next Tuesday, since it's a PERFECT follow-up to the discussion we'll be having on Monday at 6:00 about Plato's Paradox as an objection against Divine Command Theory.

I'm so sorry to hear that you had to deal with those problems with your ex. Sadly, this is a fairly common difficulty among Charismatics/Pentecostals, in my opinion. Just like any other thing of God, there are plenty of ways to mishandle a good thing and make it into a bad thing.

September 9, 2009 at 2:19 PM
Unknown said...

Sweet! I'll make it a point to leave work on time for that one.

The funny thing about my situation is that we're southern baptists. :-)

September 10, 2009 at 8:58 AM

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