Broken Lawnmowers and the Gospel

The other day I went out to my barn to get my lawn mower to cut the grass. I love cutting grass. I used to make my boys cut the grass, but after I got a zero turn lawnmower, I love getting on the mower, plugging in a book on tape, and checking out for a couple of hours. The reason I love to cut grass is that it is instant gratification. Being a pastor, I tell stories, talk to people, and listen a whole lot. It is useful work and I love it. I mean, what could be better than talking about Jesus and getting paid for it? But you really don’t see fruit immediately. You don’t really make something tangible. When I roofed houses in my youth, I could see, after a few days, something go from a complete mess to astonishing beauty. You might not think roofing is that big a deal, but if your craft is laying shingles you see it - immediately. As a pastor you usually don’t see an immediate payoff. Sin is so deceptive, most of us work years on our besetting sins and we often wonder if change is even possible. Grass cutting - immediate payoff!Anyway, I got my mower and was driving to my shop to fill it up with gas, I engaged the blades to see what height to set them at and noticed it was cutting very unevenly. In fact, one side was practically scalping the grass. Not good. Not what I had planned. That really ticked me off - I was ready for a relaxing ride and now I was going to spend a good period of time leveling the deck, which is not an easy thing. I know this because I have done it before. So, I got my wrenches out and cleaned the deck of old dead grass so I could get a better look at what I was doing.I spent about thirty minutes on the ground in dead grass and bugs in 96 degree heat slowly adjusting the deck and then measuring both sides to see if they were level. They were still not level. Now I was really ticked. I got back down on the ground and started checking to see what I was missing. When I did this, I pushed the grass away from the back wheel and noticed something - my back wheel was almost flat! So I got the air compressor out, aired up the tire, and finally the side I spent thirty minutes adjusting was two inches too high. I had to go back and move the deck back to where it originally was. Essentially, I wasted an hour of time trying to fix something that could have been fixed in three minutes by adding air to the back tire.Needless to say, I felt very foolish, more like an idiot if truth be told. I wasted so much time and effort because, in my rush to fix the problem, I didn’t ever look to see that there was another problem.I have thought about this a lot after the fact. It is such a metaphor for me about change in life. It captures so beautifully the time, effort, and money we will spend trying to change our lives and, in doing so, miss the deeper issues. Let me explain what I mean because I think that often Christians (and in fact most people) take this approach to the problems we face in our lives.The Bible says that the problems we face in life are due to the fact that our “loves” are disordered. The whole Bible tells us that the essence of life is to “Love God with our whole heart.” All our problems come because we tend to love “things,” yes even “good things,” more than God. That is, we tend to think that if we have certain things they will complete us, give us joy and happiness. In other words we give our worship to these things. When that happens essentially what we have done is made good things into idols. They take the place of God in our lives and we give them the allegiance, loyalty, and devotion that only God can have. When this happens life gets distorted. Good things can never, in and of themselves, truly make us deeply happy and give us a joy that is unshakable and a deep satisfaction in life. The reason is simple; we were made for so much more! No thing in this world is made to complete your life.So what we typically do when our loves are disordered or distorted is find ourselves in deep anxiety, fear, or joylessness. Then we usually seek counseling, or we might get a book on the things we need to do to get our joy back. We work on the problem at a surface level. We don’t look to see the deeper issues. Like me, we take a quick look and never ask deeper questions about why we are so unhappy, or whether there might be a deeper issue.The Bible says there is. The Bible tells us the way to deep joy is not to just try to keep the laws and rules better, but to examine our loves. For instance, when dealing with addictions the answer is not just to quit drinking, or stop watching porn, or stop spending too much money. The Bible says check your heart, check your loves, check out what you are going after to give you deep joy and satisfaction. The Bible goes on to say, the answer is not to try harder to get joy back, the answer is to repent of things you love more than Jesus. The addictions you have are typically just a manifestation of a deeper issue. The root, however, of all our problems and deep unhappiness in life is our idolatry.I felt like an idiot after I spent over an hour trying to solve the lawnmower problem with all my ingenuity. I actually felt manly getting all the tools out knowing I didn’t have to pay someone else to solve this mechanical problem. And all the time, if I would have just taken time and looked at the whole thing, the problem would have been fixed without much effort at all. Christianity is a lot like this. Life is hard, trying to resolve our deep issues is hard, but the gospel is a better way. Jesus says if we come to him his yoke is light. His way is better. Repent and trust Him again!