Hosanna Restoration Church

Have you ever felt like you were in a vice and someone was turning the handle? Have you felt like you or someone else only learned lessons the hard way? Have you ever learned the same lesson the hard way more than once? More than likely, we can all answer a resounding yes to these questions. I regularly pray that God will help me to learn the easy way, and even though He always does His part, I must admit that I have missed great opportunities to glide through rather than stumble through.

On this occasion, I want to share a lesson learned from the purchase of a bench-vice, rather than from being in the vice! I recently found a “good deal” on a bench vice, checked out, loaded it in the shopping cart, unloaded the cart into our vehicle, returned the cart to the cart corral, and headed home. After a two-hour drive and a wonderful time listening to teachings with my wife, we arrived home and unloaded the vehicle. It was at this point that I realized the vice did not make it from the cart into the vehicle. I had placed it on the bottom rack of the shopping cart and left it there!

The thought entered my mind to blame someone for my error, but I resisted that and took credit myself. I declared myself stupid and then made a “big faith” statement to the effect that at least someone in the parking lot would be blessed and perhaps they needed it more than I did! After all that I managed to find the number of the store, called them, and found out to my joy, that they had in fact found my vice and it was waiting for me!

There is more to be learned from this than you have time to read or I have time to write at this time, but a brief summary will plant a seed that God can grow up in us all.

First of all, God saw the problem before I knew it existed. He saw the vice on the bottom of the cart! “Well, why didn’t he tell you then,” you may ask? Perhaps He did, I just did not get it. I made sure I put the cart where it belonged, so I did check the cart, I just did not look at it!

While I was driving and enjoying myself, He was handling the problem I did not even know existed. So by the time I discovered the problem, resisted temptation to blame someone else, (thank God), and declared His child (me) stupid, everything was handled and waiting only for me to discover the truth.

My desire now is to learn from this to simply trust God all the way through everything. If He would watch so closely over such a small thing, it seems to me that He would be just as diligent over big things. Everything in our lives is important to Him. So the next time you feel like you are in the vice, remember God saw it all before you knew it was coming and He had it handled before it hit you. We can all rest in this! Will we?