You might be more connected than you think!

I recently heard a prominent minister tell a story about his daughter. He said that when she was five, she came up to the ministry office and she was running down the hall to see her dad. When someone stopped her and scolded her for running in the executive hallway at the ministry, her response was “Don’t you know who I am?” and then she turned and kept on running down the hall. The point was that when you’re born into the family, you have privilege that others don’t have. He said that even when he didn’t live at home anymore, he would still have the right to go over into his dad’s garage & borrow a tool.  The minister used these illustrations to demonstrate where we stand with God if we have made Jesus our Lord and are God’s children.

I was 10 years old when my parents divorced. I was the oldest boy in my family and with my dad being out of the picture, one of the things that became evident was that I was now responsible for fixing my mom’s exhaust pipe on her car. While my dad was very mechanically inclined, I didn’t have a lot of experience with cars or tools. As a matter of fact, I had very few tools and one of the main tools I had was a fence tool.

A fence tool is a tool that combines pliers, a flat head screw driver, a hammer, a hatchet and a sort of open end wrench. With very few exceptions, this was all I had to work with. I could work virtual wonders with an empty tin can, a couple of wire coat hangers & that fence tool. As you can guess, my solutions were temporary but I gave it my pre-teen best.

Fence Tool

A year or so later, we were at my aunt & uncle’s house for Christmas and my uncle gave me a socket set. He didn’t buy it for me, he actually bought it for his brother but his brother was unable to make. I always wondered why he didn’t just send it to his brother. Anyway, he gave me my first socket set. I don’t know if any of the sockets survived but I do know that I still have the ratchet and I still use it.

A few years later, when I was about 17, another uncle took me out to his garage, he got an old tool box that he wasn’t using and then proceeded to build me a tool collection with all of the tools that he had duplicates of. I walked away that day with a better than average set of tools. I still have and use most of them today.

If I look at my life based on my broken home, or my absentee dad, it doesn’t look like I had anything working for me. For years I used this as my excuse for not getting anywhere in life. After all, I didn’t have access to the garage with the tools, the house, the family or the man. Even if I knew where it was, I was not allowed in. I didn’t have so much that I thought I should have had, and because of that I spent years feeling sorry for myself. I soaked in self pity because I was disadvantaged and didn’t have so many of the opportunities that others had. Poor me.

It took me a long time to realize that God did not leave me without help. Not only did He give me good examples to follow, but He also provided the tools I needed to get by. He put men in my life who had compassion on me and who taught me so many things. Those experiences working on my mom’s exhaust taught me that I could do a lot with a little. They also taught me how to improvise.

I began to understand a very profound truth that changed my life forever. It’s found in Rom 8:31. It says “What, then, can we say about all of this? If God is for us, who can be against us?” When I began to understand this truth, I began to understand that, even though I don’t know anybody, and even though I am not born into money, I am not disadvantaged. God IS for me. He wants the best for me. He’s working behind the scenes all the time to cause all things to work out for my good because I love Him and have submitted to His call and purpose. All I need is faith in God! Faith in God is enough.

The Bible says that God is no respecter of persons. This means that if He did it for me, He will do it for you. If you turn to Him and allow Him to be big in your life, you will not be disadvantaged either. He will get into your situations and begin working behind the scenes to cause the best possible outcome. Remember, Nothing is impossible with God and all things are possible to them who believe. (Matt 19:26, Mark 10:27, Luke 1:37 & Mark 9:23)

That fence tool is long gone, but if I had it now, I’d probably display it in a shadow box on my wall to remind me of where I’ve been and to be thankful that I’m not where I used to be. I have to admit though, I would probably take it out from time to time and throw it at a tree. The 12 year old me used to do that too.