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Giving It Your Best Shot

by Jerry Ousley  
6/14/2007 / Christian Living

What do you do when the car needs repaired, the furnace is broken, and you just paid the mortgage payment that left your checking account wondering if it would ever see black ink again? Well, it wasn't quite that bad but I kind of got that feeling when the dryer broke down - again. I really didn't have the money to call a repairman and what I know about dryers you could cram in a thimble and still have room to put your finger in.

A few months earlier the belt had broken on our dryer and I was able to find illustrated instruction on the Internet that gave step-by-step details to replace it myself. It even gave me the part number of our model. Maybe I could find a site that would tell me why it wouldn't do anything at all.

I had envisioned the worse. Sometimes I have a tendency to look on the negative side of things and so I just knew that the timer or the motor had gone out. That would mean an expensive fix even if I could figure out how to do it myself.

As I perused the various websites and pages looking for a possible answer as to why our dryer wouldn't tumble or even act like it had power (by the way it was plugged in I checked). There was some kind of electrical energy pulsing through its wires because when you opened the door the little light came on. Otherwise it just wouldn't work. It was then that my eyes fell on something that lit up the dollar savers in my eyes. I discovered that dryers have a little part called a fuse. Now the dryer fuse looks nothing like what pops into the mind when you hear the word "fuse" at least not in mine. I think of something like you snap into place in your car, or screw into a socket in an electrical panel. The fuse in the dryer is encased in a black wrapping.

It still could have been the motor based on what I read, but for $15.00 I was willing to take that chance. So I got the part number for our dryer model and called the local appliance store. Guess what? He had one in stock! I was nervously excited. If it didn't fix it then I would have wasted $15.00. But if it worked I would save three or four times that amount.

I decided to purchase the fuse and take my chances on the cheap fix. To my utter amazement and pleasure it worked. As soon as I screwed the fuse into place and hooked the wires up to it with a prayer under my breath, a push of a button and the motor started the tumbler turning just as good as new. To say the least, I was thankful.

Life is like that even when you are a Christian. We sometimes have the misconception that when we give our lives to God that everything is going to "come up roses" from that day forth. Actual life reveals that it just doesn't work that way.

But isn't God like the richest individual in the whole universe? Yes He is. Then why can't He just give us the things we need and want? Because He knows that we'd just get spoiled and lazy. That's a hard cold fact but very true. God wants us to trust Him in faith but He also wants us to do our part. The Bible tells us that God owns the cattle of a thousand hills (see Psalm 50:10). I heard a wise man say once, "God does own the cattle of a thousand hills, but sometimes if we want one He expects us to go up and drive it down ourselves."

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.

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