Our Goose was (Almost) Cooked

I love how God uses the most ordinary things to illustrate His truths to me in very profound ways.  He is an extreme multi-tasker, and very good at it, but most of His ways are too big to wrap my head around, so I just fall over in amazement attempting to stutter some words of gratitude. 

My current illustration begins with a stove.  A couple that knew my husband decided to renovate their kitchen, replacing all their appliances.  We were blessed with a gently used stove that resembled ours but had a ceramic top that I've been wanting (and waiting for) for years.  What a nice gift, we thought, that God gave us.  It stood in our garage for several days before we had the time to replace the old one.

As my husband began to pull the old stove from the wall, he was greatly disturbed by what he found.  The wire to the stove was fried!  We were amazed that it had not caught fire to our house, even more so that it was still working. I had even cooked dinner that night!  You could say we were a bit thankful for all those bedtime prayers of protection our 7yr old faithfully prayed every night.  We were as equally thankful for the new stove coming when it did.  What timing!  How could that be?  My mind went into a spin thinking about God knowing our needs and providing for them even before we know we have a need.

But the good stuff doesn't end there.  I've been reading through Romans 5 & 6 where we are given the bad news that "through one man's offense judgement came to all men, resulting in condemnation".  Because of Adam we are destined to a life of sin/death.  But in the same sentence we are given hope, "even so through one Man's righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life" (5:18)  So God, before we were ever aware of our need for salvation, provided it through His Son and we had nothing to do with it;  like our stove, God saw the wires before we ever knew and provided an answer for it.

Concerning our stove, it was a fact that there was a deadly situation going on where we could not see, where our understanding was limited.  Not seeing or understanding it didn't make it any less true, and regardless of our lack therein God provided out of His love for us.  The answer to our problem was waiting for us.  All we needed to do was remove the "old" and let the "new" begin doing what it was made to do in the first place.  Likewise, our deadly condition is a fact and salvation waits for us to take hold of it. We are told "our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin" (6:6), meaning IT IS FINISHED. 

We have total access to new life, new beginning.....a new nature.  We were created with a purpose, and when we recognize the danger that the "old creation" is in , we can reach out for that which was provided for us, and live as we were intended to live in the beginning.