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Get Rid of It

by Shannon Heiden  
9/05/2009 / Devotionals

Then Jesus said to the disciples, "Have faith in God. I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, 'May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,' and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart. (Mark 11:22 NLT)

Beautiful One, Have you ever put your socks on, and slipped your feet into your shoes only to discover, you have a small pebble like object stuck in there too? Somehow, instead of just bending over and taking off your socks and shoe, which seems tedious at the time, you think with some fancy footwork, and skilled maneuvering you can somehow shift the pebble around to the side so you wont have to feel it anymore... Sounds good, but rarely does it work!

You manage to make your way about what you were doing, forgetting all about it. But, somewhere along your way the stone finds its way back to the bottom of your foot. It is annoying and it's not going to move. At this point you are totally inconvenienced, you now 'have to' bend over, take both your shoe and sock off and remove the stone!

The very thing you could've done sooner, but didn't....

Life can be like that sometimes. Sometimes issues start out like small stones, they agitate and annoy and, if left unattended they can very easily turn into much bigger ones. In fact, just because we don't deal with them doesn't mean they aren't there. It just means that we keep ignoring and avoiding them but the big white elephant in the room with the blanket thrown over it, is not going to go away.

And that immovable stone will eventually break everything it comes into contact with, leaving you disgusted and always trying to find ways to maneuvering everything in your life around it....

There was an old farmer who had plowed around a large rock in one of his fields for years. He had broken several plowshares on it and had grown rather disgusted about the rock.

After breaking another plowshare one day, and thinking about all the trouble the rock had caused him through the years, he finally decided to do something about it.

When he put a crowbar under the rock, he was surprised to discover that it was only about six inches thick and that he could break it up easily with a sledgehammer. As he was carting the pieces away he had to smile, remembering all the trouble that the rock had caused him over the years and how easy it would have been to get rid of it sooner.
Brian Cavanaugh, T.O.R.
"The Sower's Seeds"

Beautiful One, we are funny creatures. I mean when you really think of it, who doesn't have issues? We all do. Some are better at covering them up, but no matter the facade, everyone of us has issues. Its not are you blind, but "where" are you blind?

There are talk shows and numerous books available to us everyday talking about having an "issue free life" but really, just when you deal with one issue it seems then there is an even bigger one you get to deal with.

Because we all have 'stones", sometimes we can become overwhelmed. Sometimes, we face crisis or are just weary and we just don't have enough in us to confront them head on....Other times, we're too busy, we know that its there but we feel we are "skilled in our endeavors and we put it off hoping it will somehow just go away.

It's funny to me that that is exactly how we are. We all have done it. But no matter the excuse we make up for our inability to deal effectively with these stones, we need to remember that putting off for tomorrow, what we can do today can end up causing us a lot of unnecessary grief in the end.

Beautiful One, there are times when life can just become tiresome. We go through seasons where everything seems unmanageable and getting rid of some issue, person, or vice seems impossible.
But that is not true. It may seem like it, but usually the stones are not as hard to get rid of as we have imagined them to be. It's just that we have grown accustomed to them. We become familiar and comfortable with having them there.

We systematically and unknowingly accommodate the stone, thinking that if we just tolerate it, we can go about our lives and everything will be OK.

Not true....

What I love about this farmer, is that he saw the size of the stone and because he broke his plowshare a few times on it, he imagined that it would be impossible to get rid of it.

What he perceived, was very different than what was a reality. He had faith in the stone. The truth was, yes, it was big, yes, it had weight, but with a little hard work and tenacity to break it down bit by bit, the massive rock become nothing more than a heap of little stones and powder.

I am wondering, what stone are you trying to maneuver around in your life? Do you have an annoying pebble in your shoe?....Or, do you have a boulder of an issue you keep trying to work with, and its breaking down some things in your life?

The beauty of this story is, you have the power to get rid of it. Dont look at the size of the stone, look at the size of you God. There is nothing in your life that has to stay there.

Sometimes we have faith, and then sometimes we have Faith in God.

There's a difference....

When faced with issues, sometimes we look at the size, and the length of time they have been there and we have faith, that this is just the way it is and its not going to change..

But we need to look at every stone in life as an opportunity for our Great God to show off. The bigger the stone, the greater Glory God will get from removing it, but you might have to go and grab your crowbar, and sledgehammer and do some work.. In fact, you will, but thats OK....

Because, as you will see and with a smile on your face, it wasn't that big after all....

Beautiful One, just believe, and have faith in God.

Shannon Heiden
[email protected]
changingonelifereachingmany.typepad.com

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