Wednesday, July 10, 2002
We had just reached the town where we were vacationing when our aging van took up smoking - like big black smoke billowing out from under the hood. We had it towed to a friend's garage for a diagnosis and prognosis. He announced that the patient needed a whole new engine - at a cost of about $2,000. We didn't even have $200.00. But somehow the word of that need leaked out to a church in the community, and people kept showing up at the garage with money toward that repair. Miraculously, God supplied the whole amount through His people. And the mechanic replaced the old engine with one that was considerably more powerful. Now, we had chugged up the hills on the way there ... we flew up the hills on the way home.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "God's Upgrade System."
We lost our van - only to get back more van than we had before. That modus operandi has been repeated in our life so many times - and in the lives of millions of God's children across the centuries. It is one of the exciting ways of God. He sometimes takes something away to replace it with something much better.
You can see heaven's upgrade system in action in Philemon, verse 15, our word for today from the Word of God. Now, against the backdrop of the Roman Empire's system of slaves and masters, Onesimus, the slave of a man named Philemon, had run away. He ended up with the Apostle Paul, who had introduced Onesimus to Jesus Christ. Now Paul was sending Onesimus back to Philemon with this observation: "Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good - no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother."
Philemon had lost a servant - so he could have him back as a brother in Christ. Again, something lost so God could give back something so much better. I watched it happen as we followed God's leading to build a much-needed headquarters for our ministry. A man had agreed to sell us the land for our headquarters as time was running out for us. Then, just before we were to conclude the sale, he changed his mind - leaving us in a more critical situation regarding a base for our ministry. There was some other land nearby that we really hadn't considered. We asked about it - it was twice as much land, and we were stretched to our limit on the first property - and the owner, well, he didn't want to sell anyway. Within days, he had changed his mind, and he offered us the land for the same price as the first property. God took away a few acres only to give us twice as many for the same price!
Now God may be doing His upgrade thing in your life right now. Only, all you know so far is that you've lost something valuable. That's the hard part. When you're between what God has taken away and waiting for the "something better," you don't have either one. And that's when you pass or fail the faith test. Will you trust your Lord, who has never failed you yet, when you cannot see how this could possibly work? That's faith in the kind of God He is, not in the things you can see Him doing right now.
God says, "He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all - how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?" (Romans 8:32) So many times, when you've lost, it is God's upgrading you to something better!