So call me crazy… again. Over the years I’ve been blessed with a few musical instruments, most as gifts and some I’ve purchased. But through a couple of friends I was taught to dedicate those to the Lord for the purpose of glorifying the Kingdom. When we’d get a new instrument we’d meet with the preacher or have a time of dedication as musicians and it has always been a blessing. So scroll forward from those days to this past week and the purchasing of a new used car for myself. I realize that I could have likely purchased someone else’s problems, I am still “jump and the net will appear” Shari. I think sometimes there is a fine line between faith and stupidity with me. It is not beyond me to make a decision based on a twenty minute time frame, and for the record, God doesn’t always like time constraints. Sometime He’d like us to ponder a decision, mull it over in our minds and chew on it a while to see if the flavor is just right.
Unfortunately, that’s not how I work.
I pass by a car lot, something shiny catches my eye and I’m ready to purchase. Then reality sits in as I look at the price tag. But before I could get back in my car and off the lot the vultures have circled me and they’re pretty sure that they can hook me up with something within my price range. To top it all off, my car (which had a really bad owner, namely me) has an engine that sounds like a busload of Baptist at a housing project on a soul winning mission. It’s knock, knock and knocking and before you know it, I’m driving off the lot in something shiny. Bada-bing-bada-boom, that’s how life works.
Now I’m driving down I-79 in my Jeep Compass with slightly higher mileage than should be on it thinking… what have I done? In my defense (I feel like you’re judging me) I’d been praying to the Lord about my car; He and I were on the same page I’m pretty sure… it needed to go. I just wasn’t sure that this was the lot it needed to go on. But so it was in true impulse buying fashion.
The Lord has provided me with a car! Thank You Jesus! An instrument of service so to speak which I’ve determined needs to be dedicated to the Lord. So Sunday morning I approach our interim Pastor and asked him if he’d mind dedicating my car that evening. I think he thought I was joking, but in true seasoned Pastor form, he caught himself before he laughed out loud and said “You’re serious?”
So Sunday evening, in a little bigger dedication service than I had planned, he dedicated my car before the congregation of the Lord. They too probably thought I’d lost my mind. But that’s okay because I knew it was the right thing to do for a number of reasons.
First – Because God knows how I take care of a vehicle. It needs blessed.
Secondly – Because that vehicle is an instrument that’s going to be used for the service of the Lord. Instruments of service are not limited to the cups and offering plates in the sanctuary of the Old Testament temple. That car gets me from point “A” to point “B” on many ventures of the Lord’s service as well as secular service. My motor oil needs the anointing of God to keep it running in top form.
Brother Dennis prayed and God poured His blessings down upon me, and my soul was satisfied that the Jeep Compass in the parking lot was now the property of God.
Micah 4:13 says ~ Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion: for I will make thine horn iron, and I will make thy hoofs brass: and thou shalt beat in pieces many people: and I will consecrate their gain unto the Lord, and their substance unto the Lord of the whole earth.
My hoofs aren’t brass, they’re likely some other form of metal but they are consecrated to the Lord. I believe it’s biblical.
The blessing didn’t only ask for a commitment from God to take care of the instrument of service but it also put a responsibility on me to take care of the Lord’s property. Call me crazy… it’s okay. My family already knows it. But I don’t mind being a fool for Christ. That’s biblical too.