When Your Gage Reads "E"
If your car gas gauge is on E and you stopped at the gas station and filled the car up, what do you expect the gas gauge to read? You put gas in it so you expect it to show F. What would you think if it was still on E?
How do you think God feels when He gave His Son and it doesn't show? You invited Him into your heart and yet there is no evidence of Him being there.
You invited Jesus Christ into your life… does it show?
Was your life transformed by His son?
Where is the needle on the spiritual gauge of your heart? If Jesus is there, it should always read F.
"Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test? (2 Corinthians 13:5).
Where Your Treasure Is
On a hot, July summer day in 2021, a man discovered some 158 bowling balls in his backyard during an outdoor renovation. It was during the demolition, around the back steps of his house, that Olson discovered a black sphere buried in the sand behind some cinder blocks.
"That was one of the bowling balls," he said. "I didn't think a whole lot of it. I was kind of assuming maybe there were just a couple in there just to fill in. The deeper I got into it, the more I realized it was just basically an entire gridwork of them making up the weight in there."
As Olson continued digging, he uncovered ball after ball. It finally clicked how this treasure of rusted, cracked, dirty balls got there. There used to be a bowling ball manufacturing plant nearby in Muskegon, Michigan.
The balls were from the 1950s, which meant they were 80 years old. Although useless as bowling balls, they still had value to some. Olson plans to use the balls as edging for his landscaping or to make sculptures. He has also donated eight balls for use by a church in a bowling ball cannon at a pig roast. His stepfather also plans to use them as custom furniture legs.
In this story, it was the heart of the recipient that determined the value of the treasure. One saw edging for their landscaping, another a bowling ball cannon, and yet another, legs for their furniture. The point is the real value isn't in the treasure we unearth but in how we use it.
Jesus said, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matthew 6:21).
Suffering Makes Us Glow
A mom told me a story about a time she was standing in a long checkout line with her two boys. One was a toddler, and the other was a big kid. The big kid had a pack of glow sticks, and the toddler was screaming for one. The mother was exasperated. She grabbed the bag of glow sticks, opened it up, and gave one to the toddler.
Instantly he stopped crying. He stood there with the glow stick, smiling. Just tickled. Then his big brother took the glow stick from him, and he started crying again. Just as the mom was about to lay into the big brother, he bent the glow stick so it started glowing.
Then he handed it back to his little brother, who was now amazed with it. The big brother told him, “I had to break it so it would glow.”
Sometimes God has to break us, so we can glow. That’s why he allows us to suffer. That toddler would have been content to play with his unbroken glow stick, because he had no idea how beautiful it could be. Similarly, we are content with the way things are. We don’t know why God has to break us. But God knows how beautiful we can be when we glow.