It All Started Out Simply Enough

It all started out simply enough...

I had left our house early so that I could run an errand for my wife before heading to church for our Sunday evening service. I was going to pick up an item that my wife had purchased off of Facebook Marketplace. The item was already paid for. All I needed to do was to retrieve the item which the seller had placed outside the door of their apartment.

It took me about 20 minutes to get to the apartment which I found without difficulty. I pulled into a parking spot directly in front of the apartment that I needed to find. For some reason, as I got out of my vehicle, I decided to leave my truck running while I retrieved the item.

I got out of my truck, shut the door, and headed toward the apartment. The item was sitting in front of the door. I picked it up, carried it back to by truck and placed it in the back. Mission accomplished...or so I thought.

I went to the driver's door and opened it...or at least attempted to; it was locked! I checked all of the doors. They were all locked! As I mentioned already, the truck was running and, to make matters worse, my phone was inside my truck as well. I had no way of opening the truck and no way of calling my wife!

I leaned up against my truck for a moment, contemplating what to do. Do I brake a window? No. Too messy and too expensive. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that my immediate option was to knock on the door of the apartment where I had gotten the item and ask them (if they were home) if I could use their phone to contact my wife.

I knocked on the apartment door and fortunately, someone came to the door. It was the individual that my wife had been corresponding with regarding the purchase. I wasn't thinking clearly at this point and so I simply asked if they would message my wife. They opened Facebook Messenger and handed it to me so that I could send the message myself. (Yes, I know what you're thinkning, "Why didn't you simply call your wife?" As I said, I wasn't thinking clearly at this point.) I messaged my wife, "This is Joseph. Send Nathan (my son-in-law) with extra set of keys." Yes, I know, that wasn't a very descriptive message. Again, I wasn't thinking clearly.

At that point, I walked to the main entrance of the apartment complex so that I could flag down Nathan when he arrived. I waited.

And waited.

I knew that it was going to take at least 25-30 minutes before Nathan would arrive. I was going to be cutting it close to making it to church on time for our Sunday evening service.

It was at this point that the message, which I had just preached that morning, came to mind. One of the points of that message had been, "Live a life that is pleasing to the Lord; not yourself."

“Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more.” 1 Thessalonians 4:1

I knew that this was a perfect opportunity to put that message into practice and so I stopped and consciously asked myself the question, "Is my attitude right now pleasing to the Lord?"

After waiting about 20 minutes (and Nathan not showing up), the individual whose phone I had used, pulled up in front of where I was waiting. After some brief small talk, they offered to let me call my wife. (Duh! Why hadn't I thought of that before?!?!?) I gratefully called my wife. She was confused. She had just seen the Facebook Message. As clearly as possible I explained the situation. She said that she would bring my extra set of keys to me.

At this point, if all went well, I would "squeak" into our church service only a few minutes late.

I waited another 20 minutes for my wife to arrive. When she did, I jumped into our van so that she could drive me around to the place where my truck was parked - and still running! When I got in the van, I looked at the keys that she had brought. They were the wrong keys! I didn't get mad, or frustrated, or anything of the sort. None of that would help and I wanted to make sure that my words and actions were pleasing to the Lord. We just had a good laugh and headed back home so that I could get the right keys.

At this point I knew that there was no way that we were to going to make it to the evening service - at all! I contacted my "right hand man," as I call him, to explain the situation. He said that they would take care of the service.

My wife and I enjoyed our ride together joking about the mishaps of what should have been a very simple task!

We retrieved the correct keys and made it back to the apartment complex to find my little pick up truck still running. It hadn't run out of gas and it hadn't overheated (which was a possibility - although remote - that had crossed my mind). When I got into my truck, I checked the fuel gauge to see that I still had over a half tank of fuel left. It had been running for well over an hour!

By the time we arrived back home, I had been gone for over two hours!

While riding with my wife, I commented to her, "I wonder why God allows things like this to happen?" While neither of us had an answer to that question, maybe, just maybe, in this situation it was to test whether this preacher would "practice what he preached" and respond to a trying situation in a way that was pleasing to the Lord?!?!

I often tell our church family, at the conclusion of my message, to not wait to put into practice the message that I have just preached. Never, in a million years, did I imagine that I would be putting my own message into practice so quickly!

This week - today - ask yourself, in each situation you find yourself...

"Am I living a life that is pleasing to the Lord? or pleasing to myself?"