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Good Instructions







Recently I bought a shed, a metal shed.  It was 8 x10, feet not inches.  When I bought it, I had every confidence that I could put it together.  However, as I opened the box and saw about 200 pounds of metal staring back at me, my confidence fizzled like a wet firecracker.  I should have known I was in over my head when the kind Lowes man delivered the shed and ran.  He probably thought I would ask him to assemble it.  As I stood looking at the shed, wannabe, I said a prayer, “Oh Lord, what a mess this is.”  My daughters questioned, “Mom, you ARE going to read the directions, right.”  The know that I tend not to read the instructions.  So with my daughters’ questions ringing in my ears, I decided to get out the directions.  There was a moment of panic when I thought perhaps they did not SEND instructions.  They were under all the parts.  So we started with step one and began assembling a shed.   We spent about two hours constructing braces and beams.  Why so long?  Well, the directions were not the best.  So, we would stare at the directions and then at the piece of the shed we were holding trying to figure out what they expected us to do with it.  Often, in the course of putting the shed together, we realized that they had neglected to give us critical information.  Like the fact that there should be three beams.  We were lead to suppose that we were creating two I-beams.  There was so much wasted time, correcting a problem due to faulty instructions.
As I took pieces apart, I thought about the instructions God gives us.
Love your neighbor
Pray continually
Keep your lips from evil
Let him who stole, steal no more
Feed the Hungry
They are pretty straightforward.  God does not ask us to guess at what he wants.  We never have to waste time going back to correct something due to wrong directions because HIS directions are always right.
What a blessing!
What confidence we have that God’s instructions are good and perfect
And there is always a reason for his direction, either in what we read or specific instructions to us, whether WE understand it or not.   It is the reason that we can trust what God tells us to do.  Whether it’s visiting someone, or offering help, we can know that God has a purpose even if WE do not see it.

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