When Grease Blocks the Grace

I love to grill, but don’t like to clean my grill. Over time it gets junked up with grease and grit so that it no longer works properly. There are three metal tubes. The first tube receives the propane and starts firing.  Then a small rod or pipe delivers the propane to the other tubes and all three fire up. Usually with just a little bit of cleaning I can get it to work. It might take a second but the propane will make its way through the rod, burning off the build up of grease and gunk and I can grill.

Last week though, my minimal cleaning wasn’t enough. The tubes were too clogged up so that the fire was very low in the first and second tubes and the third tube, wasn’t even lighting at all. I got frustrated. I started cursing the grill and cursing the maker of the grill. “This grill sucks. (The company that makes it) is overrated.” I felt powerless so I just cursed the grill.

My wife, on the other hand, worked towards a solution. She is much handier than I am, so she started to unscrew the tubes and take them out of the grill. She shook them and tapped them a bit. Of course, the grease and the gunk started coming out. Then she put the tubes back in the grill. I turned on the propane, hit the ignition button and the fire lit up full power. We could grill our salmon for dinner.

Allow me to share two applications of this experience. The first will be obvious and you probably know where I am going with it.

Just like my grill got clogged up with grease and gunk and inhibited the fire flowing through a grill - sin and unbelief can build up in our minds and hearts and keep the Spirit of God’s power from flowing into our lives.

Obviously the better practice - the one I don’t follow for my grill and don’t follow enough in my spiritual life - is to routinely clean out the gunk in our lives. We recognize our sin and unbelief and repent of it on a regular basis.

When we fail to regularly repent, I think sometimes God shakes us up. He allows our regular lives to get disrupted so that he can shake out the things that our clogging our heart, mind and souls and keeping his fire from flowing through us. Right now I think I am going through such a shaking in my own life. Unbelief has grown in an area of my life and God is shaking me up to trust in him and his provision.

The second application comes from Bill Johnson’s book The Supernatural Power of a Transformed Mind. In the fifth chapter he talks about three different mindsets: the Herodian mindset, the Pharisee Mindset and the Kingdom Mindset. He describes the Herodian mindset as atheistic. And he notes that many Christians are practical atheists.

He describes the Pharisaical mindset in this way: “Pharisees provide explanations, not solutions.” That description hit me between the eyes. Just as I was cursing my grill and criticizing the maker, the Pharisaical mindset outlines the problems we face as a Church, but it doesn’t provide any solutions.

The Pharisaical mindset criticizes and curses our culture, but doesn’t have hope.  It focuses on what we lack as a Church and what we don’t have rather than what we do. If we are not careful, we can easily fall into this kind of mindset when it comes to the problems we face as church leaders.

We need the Kingdom mindset. The Kingdom mindset believes in God’s power and provision that can come through at any time, that God has power and wisdom for the struggles we face. We start from heaven’s perspective and focus on what God has for us. We focus on God and not our problems.

As Paul says, “Think about what is above and not what is on earth.” (Colossians 3:1)  As Bill Johnson notes, “ We should see situations from heaven’s perspective and declare the word of the Lord – and watch heaven invade.”

Where are you spending great energy outlining the problem and going on and on about how difficult it is? Where are you spending too much time criticizing the way the world is the way I was criticizing the makers of my grill? Start thinking of it from heaven’s perspective. Stop paying attention to the wind and the waves and fix your eyes on Jesus. Declare God’s word over the situation. Speak words of God’s power and faith over the situation.

That’s how we step into God’s Kingdom.

Rooting for you,
Tom