Reading the Owner’s Manual
by Otto Bixler
These days we can buy our automobiles with various optional extras: air-conditioning, CD players, special seats, GPS and more. We can choose just what we want and reject the rest. Not so with coming to God: He comes with a whole package! But somehow we’ve missed this idea. Perhaps we accepted Jesus just to get to Heaven, or for security, or because we needed a friend, or safety. Those are not wrong, but we got a whole lot more. Perhaps we need to read the ‘owner’s manual.’ If we want our car to operate properly and not break down, we need to see what the manual says about service and oil changes, so that our investment is preserved. But with God, it’s not like owning a car – in fact, He owns us, not the other way around! Maybe you missed that point and you’re angry that He hasn’t performed like you thought He should.
Often, we’re expecting our life to operate better, but it doesn’t and we wonder why. As we read the ‘owner’s manual’ it seems to promise great blessings, victory, success and peace. Could it be that we are missing something? If God is perfect and loving and will never forsake us, and we know that’s true, then why all the trouble and lack of fulfillment?
He claims that He will never forsake us, but is it possible that we could somehow be forsaking Him. It isn’t that He has left us, but that somehow we’ve got on another path: our path, not His. In Proverbs 8 He says, ‘I walk in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of justice, to endow those who love me with wealth, that I may fill their treasuries.’ So how can we know if we’re not on His path? Are your treasuries full? If not; perhaps it’s time to ask God to show us His pathway for your life.
Prayer: Let me know Your (path)ways that I may know You, so that I may find favour in Your sight. Amen.
Otto Bixler and his wife Sharon joined the full-time team in 1990 and began the work of Ellel East (covering Eastern Europe and Russia) in 1992. He is Regional Director of Ellel East, a member of the Executive Leadership, an ordained Vineyard pastor, and teaches worldwide for Ellel. He has recently authored a book “Widows, Orphans, and Prisoners” which has come out of his 18 years of ministry in the Ellel East region. Otto has one married son and two grandchildren who live in the USA. His heart is to establish the Kingdom of God in churches wherever he goes through the equipping of the saints and helping in their restoration process.
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