Time for another blow to the old pride! This will be a very personal post.

When I’m not sure what to do, I have a hard time planning or implementing a plan. If I know how to figure something out, great, I jump on it and can execute well, but one of my great weaknesses is that when I am uncertain and insecure about what to do, I can become discouraged to the point of paralysis. This is a tendency that I hate in myself and that brings embarrassment and shame to me. It was over a decade into our marriage before I finally was able to admit to Sarah that this is why I don’t get some things done. Not only don’t I know what to do, but I don’t know how to even start to proceed, and that fear causes me to just stop in my tracks. Admitting this here is only by the strength of God’s work in my life; to be this honest. (Side note, this is why God sent me an Administrative Assistant and an Administrative Pastor. Beth & Cody supply the missing piece in me to help me move past the blocks at church).

As fall came upon us, I needed to get the next supply of wood for this winter and next. Suddenly I was offered wood, but it was quite a ways away and was not cut up yet. So I needed help, a truck, someone to cut it up, plus figuring out when to get all these pieces together to make it work. I put out a plea on FB and got some responses but didn’t know what to do about it. (see? embarrassing). I did try to push through, but not knowing what to do and the feeling that I couldn’t make this work began to rise up and smother me. The weights began to pile up in my head. I didn’t want to disappoint the person who wanted to bless me with the gift of the wood, I felt it was wrong to try to martial resources from church to help because the church doesn’t exist to help me, I wasn’t confident I would have the time and ability to work up the wood since it was getting so late, and my daughter kept asking if we were going to be getting wood. Classic Ira trap.

Why am I sharing such a sad, weak picture of myself? Not because I want to, but because it matters to what happened next and demonstrates the goodness of God which comes as grace and mercy, not as a reward for our goodness.

This Sunday, I sat at church trying to grab some late lunch before Bible study after a busy morning and early afternoon, when my wife called and asked me to come home right away because, she said cryptically, “there are people in the yard.” So home I go, very confused and figuring probably some unexpected relative that I haven’t seen in a while dropped by unexpectedly. What I found was cars parked all along the edge of the road and my driveway and backyard filled with people from church working up and stacking wood. It was pouring rain, but they had a big tent set up to work under.

I. Was. Shocked. I didn’t have words to express what it means. I still don’t feel like I can adequately express what it meant for me. This blog post is an attempt.

It wasn’t merely that they took care of my wood for probably two years. It was that they stepped into an area where I was lost and failing and just FIXED it. The weight off my shoulders psychologically is hard to quantify. I didn’t deserve it. They shouldn’t have done it. And I could not possibly be more humbled, more grateful, more touched. How to put into words such powerful feelings of wanting to cry and laugh at the same time. I hate to need help and to need to be rescued and yet it feels so good to have been helped and rescued. It is embarrassing that I couldn’t do it on my own and oh so freeing to not have had to do it on my own.

I think that sums up all of us as we face coming to Christ or not. To come to Christ is to admit our utter failure and incompetence. It is demeaning, embarrassing, humiliating to have to face the fact that you can’t do it and you need to be rescued. On the other hand, there is no greater joy than to be loved undeservedly, delivered fully, and freed from trying to do something you know you can’t do.

I failed but was handed success by my church. I sinned and was handed righteousness by my God. In both cases I am deeply humbled, brought to tears and filled with joy. As I said to some of the workers that afternoon. “I thought it might be a relative, but it turned out to be family.” I am so thankful for everyone who had even a small part in this special gift of grace.