One-Stop-Shop!

My oven ignition module went out over the weekend, so I contacted my home warranty company, and they sent an appliance repairman from Sears.  As he was working on my oven yesterday afternoon, I stood nearby in the kitchen and talked with him.  I mentioned how my first real job was at Sears following my senior year in high school.  In the course of the conversation, I reminisced of how that old “B” store, which opened in 1948, was still the local go-to store in the early 1970’s when I worked there.

I told the repairman, who was originally from Texas, of how I remembered that old tri-level store as being an almost one-stop shopping extravaganza!  You could buy or order just about anything from that store, from popcorn to farm and garden supplies, to socks & shoes, camping equipment and some of the best hand tools made (I worked in sporting goods and hardware… so I might have been a little prejudice)! 

And then tucked in the corner under the stairs in the basement, right near where I worked… was the magical world of the renown Sears Catalog where one could order just about anything you could imagine, meeting almost any need anywhere!

When I was attending Junior College, I worked most nights that the store was opened, so when things slowed down toward the end of the evening, I enjoyed perusing the pages of the catalog.  I ordered many unique items over the years, including a custom steering wheel and a new leather top for my 1966 MGB… come to think of it.. I also replaced the horn through the catalog… hummm… did I get the rollbar that way too?  Nope, I purchased it from the boyfriend of the cute evening switchboard operator, which was also located in the basement!

The idea of that old store being a one-stop, meet-all-your-needs location reminded me, believe it or not… of my Bible!  BUT WAIT!  Before you go looking for a new steering wheel for your car in your Bible, let me explain this in light of the last blog post I wrote (1/2/22 – http://pjberruto.blogspot.com/2022/01/when-extra-ordinary-is-ordinary.html)

There are countless verses in the Bible that talk about how we can do all things through Christ or of how God will supply our every need,* but as we discussed in the last post, in order to receive the ALL’s and EVERY’s promised us in God’s Word, we have to believe to see God’s EXTRA-ORDINARY working in our lives!  And in order to do that… well, as I’ve mentioned many times before, it takes us developing a totally different mindset than most other people! 

It takes a mind-set of EXPECTATION that God not only CAN but WILL do for us whatever He promises us in His Word!

The last recorded promise that Jesus told us before He physically left this earth and ascended into heaven where He sat down at the right hand of God was,

And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.)** 

That’s quite a promise with a pretty unusual list of EXTRA-ORDINARY phenomenon’s… wouldn’t you agree?  How do you think your next-door neighbor would react if you nonchalantly mentioned this as a normal activity of yours… as you talked while trimming the bushes separating your two yards?  Probably like our parents (having 2 teacher dads) reacted in 1980 when we told them that Piper planned on homeschooling our kids!  So yeah… you know “The Look” and the shocked silence that followed!

But you know?  It’s NOT their reaction that counts… it’s yours!  The word “believe” in this verse means “to have faith in, to think to be true, to be persuaded of, to credit or place confidence in.” (Strong’s and Thayer’s)  When I read these definitions this morning, a light went on in my understanding and I immediately realized that this kind or level of belief is as one who has developed an understanding of something that is personally known as the truth, is never questioned and is just taken for granted. 

That reflection reminded me of the engineers that I worked with in the fabrication areas at Hewlett Packard.  When they were called in to work on a problem, they would first list the truths that they already knew, like the make-up and characteristics of the material used and/or the chemical interactions that were going on.  Those were pre-existing truths or facts that they did not need to re-study or question.  They took that knowledge as a given and moved on in their investigation from that point.

That's what I believe Jesus was telling us in His last directives to us.  He was saying that once we got to the personal place where we believed the truth, power and love of His Word, to be the first given and/or known fact in any situation, then we could say and do the EXTRAORDINARY, seemingly impossible deeds that He spoke of in these verses… and know... that He will CONFIRM His Word with His signature, EXTRA-ORDINARY “signs following” ***

It's actually a pretty simple concept!  To me, it just comes down to the question of if I really BELIEVE God and His Word to be true, and if so… am I going to act on it… or... watch everything that is near and dear to me, fall apart around me?

As for me and my family... we'll believe God's One-Stop-Shop over everything else!

 

*Philippians 4:13,19

**Mark 16:17-18 (KJV)

***Mark 16:20 (KJV)