When We Don't Know What We're Doing

 Bill was working on his car; it really ran well, but Bill fancied himself to be something of a mechanic, and routine maintenance was necessary.  Today he had changed the oil, and he decided while he was under the hood to do a little more than routine maintenance. He turned a screw on the carbureter and idled the engine up a little; after all, he never had been satisfied with it; it seemed to idle rather low when he was waiting for lights to change.  He finished his oil change, installed the air cleaner, and closed the hood.
 

The next day he noticed the engine idling a little rougher than normal; he didn't realize it, but when he idled the engine up in his carport he unwittingly caused a small amount of "ported" vacuum to be delivered to the EGR valve, which causes the engine to idle rough if applied at idle speeds.  Bill had caused himself a problem but he didn't connect his newly aquired rough idle with the adjustment he had made.  A friend pointed out the EGR valve and suggested he unplug the vacuum line.  Bill did so to find that the engine idled much better, so he permanently stoppered the vacuum line with a BB and drove happily with his smooth idling car, once again satisfied that he had made a needed improvement. 

Actually, he now had two problems, because the lack of EGR flow caused detonation, or "valve rattle" as it is sometimes called.  He didn't understand where all these problems were coming from; in his mind he had two choices; one was to start using premium gas to get rid of the rattle, but that was expensive.  His friend suggested another option.  Retarding ignition timing would do away with the rattle. His friend told him how to do it; simply loosen the distributor and turn it this way and that with experimental test drives in between, and when the rattle was gone, his problem would be solved. 

Bill performed this operation and managed to retard the timing to get rid of the rattle, but after a week or so he noticed that his car didn't have the responsive acceleration it once had, and besides that, his gas mileage had gone to pot.  Bill became really disgusted and he hated his car more every day, but he owed too much on it to trade it in on a new one.

 Bill took his car to a local mechanic who seemed to have lots of cars sitting around his shop all the time and was told he needed a carbureter overhaul; two hundred dollars later he had even worse gas mileage, his rough idle was back and  he had sooty black smoke coming out the tailpipe.  Bill was in a mess of his own making...

 Have you ever seen Bill's situation played out in a relationship between a married couple or a group of people whose jobs force them to work in close proximity to each other?  One person who has the idea that he or she can make a worthwhile change in another person will use tools of manipulation to try and make an adjustment.  Maybe one employee (we'll call him Sam) is offended by the filthy language or sloppy work habits of his co-worker and uses some manipulative measures to try and affect a change.  The sloppy, cursing co-worker (we'll call him Hank) grows increasingly irritated at the manipulative tactics of the "mechanic" and the working relationship they have suffers, along with their performance on the job.

 Or maybe a wife (we'll call her Jean) decides to use the manipulative tools of anger, criticism, and sex to file the rough edges off her husband.  The marriage relationship suffers and hobbles along like a three-legged dog, and like shade-tree Bill in the above story, she doesn't realize she was the source of the problem. 

Things grow even more complicated with a third party is called in; secular marriage counselors and sex therapists frequently apply band-aid cures that don't last or sometimes make the problems multiply.  Like Bill, they went to the wrong place for service.  You see, Bill's car was still under warranty when he  made all these "repairs".  What he needed to do was to carry the car back to the manufacturer's dealership, turn it over to the real mechanic, and it would be straightened out for free. 

All his efforts to help himself, just like all the efforts of Jean to change Jake and Sam to change Hank.
 

There are those people in our lives who really rub us raw sometimes and we struggle with feelings of frustration, discouragement, anger, and even despair.  There are wives with abusive husbands, employees with abusive supervisors, children with abusive parents, and so on.  What should you do about these things?  There are many options.  Divorce is one.  Quitting the job or firing the employee is another.  Kids have run away from home on more than one occasion.  These are poor choices in most cases and totally unecessary.
 

Once I heard a story about a woman who had to care for her father after her mom died... 
 

The woman was unmarried and her aging dad was hateful and verbally abusive, angry at everybody because he had lost his wife and nobody could fill her shoes.  Every day his daughter became more disgusted at his attitude; nothing she did seemed to make any difference, and she was only performing the least amount of service required to meet his needs.  Her angry rebuttals to his snapping tongue simply fed her frustration; he seemed to enjoy making her miserable.  

One day in desperation she took the problem to Jesus with an open heart.  She pledged to do anything He told her to do in order to straighten this situation out.  She turned the relationship over to Him and began to draw wisdom from His word.  She remembered snatches of Scripture verses she had memorized so long ago:

"Love your enemies... pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you."
          Matt. 5:44a, 44c

 "...whoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him two miles..."  Matt. 5:41

 It came to her that doing these things was the answer.  She complained in her prayer about how hard it would be to perform acts of love for her father; it wasn't that she didn't love him.  She considered her decision to look after him at home and put up with his abuse a loving act, and so it was.  But right now she needed help with a dead relationship, and Jesus was telling her to do things that were against her feelings and natural tendencies.  She visited the pastor of her church and laid the situation before him.

 "What's your dad's favorite dessert?" he wanted to know.

 "That's easy," she replied, "he loves chocolate fudge."

 "Make him some fudge the next time he really makes you angry," was the pastor's advice.  She didn't say so, but she thought, "Yeah, Right!"  Make him some fudge indeed!"  Then she realized that the Scripture passages she had remembered pointed her in the same direction.

 The next day at noon, she went into the kitchen, trying to be civil, and her dad was as abusive in his language as ever.  She gritted her teeth and held her tongue, feeling her anger swelling within her.  She put his plate of food before him and he snapped and complained about everything she had fixed.  Rather than shouting at him the way she had done previously, she quietly started putting together the chocolate fudge to quell her anger.  As he sat with his back to her glowering and grumbling, she finished the fudge, cut it into squares and set it on the table in front of him.  Her dad hadn't had fudge since her mom died.  As she performed the act of love, she felt her anger instantly dissolve.  Her dad sat staring at the fudge and when he looked up at her there were tears creeping out of his eyes and down his wrinkled cheeks.  This is a true story.  They sat at the table together and prayed; five minutes later he had committed his life to Christ.

 Sometimes God puts us in situations where we're forced to turn to Him.  These situations don't always go away overnight, but as He told Paul in II Corinthians 12:

 "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness."
  II Corinthians 12:9b

Bill found his problems were solved when he went to a real mechanic. 

Ours will dissolve in time if we turn them over to the Savior.  He can fix things that we can't.  Maintenance is wise.  Tinkering is not.  Let's all learn this truth.    R.W.M.