Heavy Equipment

[B-A-C]

Heavy Lifting.

I've never really been a heavy equipment operator. I don't know how to operate a backhoe
or a front end loader. I did drive a fork lift a couple of times, but that's about as good
as it gets.

Heavy machinery is fascinating to me. Cranes and hydraulic lifts. I wonder how anything
was ever built before that technology existed? Things that weigh thousand of pounds can be
moved in just a few seconds. Holes can be drilled. Tons of dirt can be moved easily.

I have shoveled dirt a few times in my yard. Even just a few small shovel fulls wear me
out fairly easily these days. (Oh to be young again )

It's much the same way with Jesus.
He did the heavy lifting, and He still does. Much like lifting a 2,000 ton piece of steel.
I can't do it without a crane. There are many things I can not do without Jesus. I am weak.
Even spiritually sometimes I am weak. I am glad He is strong.

But even a backhoe, or front end loader needs an operator. They don't operate themselves.
At least not yet. It takes a lot of skill to run some of those machines.

God wants us to be equipment operators. He wants us to move mountains sometimes. Not
physical piles of dirt necessarily, but spiritual mountains. Tear down Spiritual strongholds.
We can't do these things on our own.

One of the problems with being a heavy equipment operator, is that we can sometimes tend to
think we did it all on our own. It's possible the boss will put us out there the next day
without a tractor, and say move that mountain. Then we are likely to remember, it wasn't
really us that did all the work.

Sometimes we tend to think we are accomplishing things for Gods kingdom on our own power.

On the other hand, just because we have a large piece of machinery that can do these things
for us, we still have to get up and climb in the drivers seat. The machinery doesn't move itself.

The other thing that sometimes happens, is backhoe drivers sometimes go off on their own and
try to do their own thing without a plan. Or sometimes they have their own plan which has
very little to do with the bosses plan. I am reminded of a news story a while back where a
wrecking ball crew accidentally tore down the wrong building. You need to have the same plan
as the boss. Otherwise you can end up fighting against what He is trying to do.

The Holy Spirit, helps us. He guides us, He persuades us, He even teaches us how to drive
the backhoe and which levers to push and pull at the right time.
But the Holy Spirit can be resisted.

There are times the Holy Spirit prompts us to do things, but we don't feel like it, or we
are tired, or we have other plans. In fact every time we sin, we are resisting the Holy Spirit.

We can't assume that we have the power to do things in God's kingdom on our own.
But we also can't assume that because we have a large tractor, the field will plow itself.
God doesn't need us to get things done. There are plenty of other tractor drivers out there
who are willing to do what God asks of them. But why let them steal your rewards?

It's possible that if we resist the Holy Spirit often enough, and never do we He prompts us to do.
The boss will come to us one day and say... "You wicked and lazy servant, why didn't you do the
things I gave you the talents to do?"

God works through us, but we have to be willing to let Him.
Sometimes He just wants us to build a small shed, sometimes maybe a single story house,
but maybe sometimes a large 100 story skyscraper. Just like in real life construction, it often
takes more than one heavy equipment operator to do this, also it doesn't usually happen in one day
or even one week. We need to be spiritually in tune with God, and with each other.
We need to have the same set of floor plans in front of us. We need to work together.

But we still have to get in the tractor to do it.