If God is good, then we don't have to provide for my own happiness

James Daniels has been here this week and we have spent a lot of time talking about the church he is planting in Alabama. Aside from spending a lot of time raising money from other churches, we spent lots of late nights talking about the wild ride and adventure he is going to be on in the next few months. We told lots of stories, and because we both have roots in smaller agrarian settings, the stories would tend to be, well, rather colorful. None more so than this story he told me the other night.

As we talked about what it meant to love a place and the people where you minister, James told me a story about John Barker. John Barker is a boilermaker and drives a Harley. James met him after he noticed a guy riding around his place on a 4-wheeler after he and Larissa moved into the house out in the country. Over the next few months James and he became good friends. John is like a lot of salt-of-the-earth southerners, he is a walking contradiction. He has more guns than an a Militia but is the greatest champion of the poor in the area and will give you the shirt off his back.Not long ago, James noticed that a chipmunk had arrived at his house. He kept getting in the garage and making a mess. So James put out a sticky trap. If you live in the country, chipmunks have no romance and you just don’t view them as you would Alvin and his singing chipmunk brothers. Chipmunks are a pest. A couple of days later Larissa heard a terrified squeal and to her horror, there was the chipmunk caught in the sticky trap. The harder he struggled the more stuck he got. She called James in a panic and said, “James you have to come home and do something with this chipmunk.” James told her he couldn’t come home and she would have to deal with it. To which Larissa assured him that there was nothing in their vows that included chipmunk disposal.

James was in a quandary but then he thought of John Barker. John was home and he was the kind of man that could take care of this pest in short order. So, he called John and told him Larissa wouldn’t deal with the chipmunk and would he please go over to the house and deal with it. John assured him he would.

A while later, James got a call from John Barker and John told him this. “I took care of the chipmunk, but it took almost two hours. That little guy wouldn’t stay still and I had to be really careful with a razor to not injure him. In fact, when I got him free from the trap, I was right proud. He looked really good except for a few places where he didn’t have any hair!”I have thought about that story since last night. It reminds me of the theme I have preached on for the last month - freedom. The more we try to do our own thing and think we are free, we are just like that chipmunk - the more we are getting stuck in something we can’t get out of. It most likely takes  a lot longer to feel the wages of sin and realize how in bondage we are, but like the chipmunk, there is only one way to be free and you cannot free yourself!  Jesus has to painstakingly separate you from your sin. He did that on the cross by taking your punishment. And then over time, it is a lot like getting out of that sticky trap - we are continually asking him to help us do what we will never do without great grace.We’ll talk about this Sunday, along with a couple of baptisms, a bunch of people professing their faith, and the culmination of a week of VBS. Then, in the afternoon, after a good nap, we’ll throw down to crawfish and bluegrass. I can’t wait!

Blessings,

James M. Holland