DIY.
Don’t ya just love do it yourself projects? Me too. But do you ever start enthusiastically only to have reality set in that DIY’ers aren't as easy as you thought? Or as easy as Pinterest and the HGTV makes them look? Yeah, me too. As we started a project a few days ago in my kitchen, I was reminded of my last "Do it Yourself" project when the Holy Spirit spoke so powerfully to me and I had an aha moment about DIY'ing. As the wall in my kitchen came down, I was reminded of the walls that have come down in my life. And as I reflect on how long I've desired for this kitchen wall to come down, I am also reminded how God also longs for the same spiritually in us. And how He never intended for us to become DIY'ers, but to live powerfully by the Spirit He gave us.
It was last summer when I decided to make a walkway leading from my driveway to my front door. I would do this just as simply as it looked on Pinterest. My Dad and I measured the distance of the walkway and then went to town cutting enough pallet boards in half to lay the path. After that, my plan was to simply dig up sod a couple inches deep curving all the way up to my front door, then lay down the pallet boards. Simple. Besides my daughter encouraging me and offering advice on the overall look, this was a literal do it yourself’er. I had been digging dirt for just about 30 minutes when I stopped and took the picture on the right . It was at this moment I knew I had bit off more than I can chew. I knew it was not as simple as the layout picture I took before (on left).
I quickly started thinking of what else I could turn this path of dug up dirt into because I was abandoning the great idea of making a walkway. Because this was something I couldn’t do on my own. As I sat defeated my daughter came outside and we began throwing new ideas around, but we both came to the conclusion to keep going with the original plan. I worked for hours in the hot sun digging up sod, stacking it in a wheelbarrel and locating it to other places in the yard and leveling out the dirt in the walkway. It was exhasuting. Into the late afternoon I finally had made my way to the front sidewalk and was done digging. And I did a little celebration dance…oh yes I did! I was so excited to be near the end of the project and relieved to be done with the hard labor. The final part to bring this DIY’er to completion was to simply lay the boards down on the walkway. Simple. But since this wasn’t a straight line, it was a tad bit more difficult than just simply laying boards down. Though the hard labor was over, the frustration was not. But I pressed on. Until I heard thunder. I had been working nearly 10 hours on this DIY’er and thunder and rain were welcomed at this point. I was so over it. I quickly abandoned the art of precise board laying and gladly welcomed the new art of careless board tossing. And then the rain came.
By the time the storm passed it was dark so I had to wait until the next morning to get a good look at the completed project. And sadly, it was apparent the project was finished quickly because there was a spot that didn’t look right. It was uneven and difficult to walk on. Walking on one side of the board caused the other side of the board to lift up. I decided it would have to be redone and at closer look I realized there was a giant root underneath.
So I began pulling out the boards. I decided I would work around the root by curving the boards around it. I moved the boards this way and that way but nothing looked right. Arg! I pulled the boards out again. This time I grabbed some flat, shiny rocks from my back yard and lay them down replacing the boards. Picture this: a couple feet of boards then a few flat, shiny rocks, then the path continued with boards. And…done. But when my husband looked at it, he said it looked like I ran out of boards and just threw some rocks in the middle of the path. And…not done. Ugh!
“What you need is to get rid of the root,” he said. Get rid of the root? For real? He steps in at the tail end of this DIY’er to offer this? “Get rid of the root.” Really!? I had run through every possible option. But that had never crossed my mind. Becasue it was impossible…hello! It was a huge tree root! I had done about everything I could think of:
Cover it up, check.
Go around it, check.
Feeble attempts to distract with flat, shiny objects, check, check and check.
But get rid of it? Seriously? This seemed impossible to me.
As I was running all these things in my mind, my husband went to the garage and grabbed a power tool. He plugged it in and took that root out. Just like.that.
Seriously.
As I smoothed out the dirt from the hole the root left and lay the remaining boards down, my husband walked away. Victoriously, I might add. Holding his mighty power tool in one hand he pulled the trigger and I heard the unmistakable sound that power tools make and I heard these bold words, “Power! That’s what you needed.”
Pause. Have you ever dealt with a root like me? Started digging up the hard ground exposing a root that took hold in your life? And instead of taking the root out, you just learn to live with it because it’s so big and impossible? Maybe you’ve covered it up? Worked around it? Or strategically distracted? But that root? It’s still there. And its grown deeper and bigger making it seem impossible to get rid of. Have you become a spiritual DIY'er?
But in Jesus Christ, we have power. “I have the strength to face all conditions by the power that Christ gives me.” Philippians 4:13 GNT
I love this quote by Reinhard Bonnke, “Without the Holy Spirit, Christianity is reduced to religion.”
So let’s take out some roots and stop covering up, working around and pretending. Let’s plug into that mighty power we have in the Holy Spirit. Don’t do it alone. Walk victoriously in the Spirit.
POWER. That’s what we need.