Choosing Your Tools
by Burk McNair
Are you a carpenter? You say you're not? But you really are!
Every day you are using tools to build a house—God's building! (I
Cor. 3:9.) As you haven't thought you were a carpenter, probably you
don't know what rools you are using in your construction for God.
What carpenter would use a post maul for a hammer, or a tooth pick in
place of a ten penny nail? Sounds foolish, doesn't it? But maybe you
are doing just such a thing in your carpentry.
Perhaps your instruments are like those of most Americans. You won't
mind if we look into your workshop, will you, to see what tools you
have been using?
Like most of your neighbors, I see you acquired your tools from just
anywhere" when you were young. What's this I stumbled on as I opened
your workshop door?—discouragement? Of all things! look what is lying next to it —carelessness! And right in the middle on the top of your workbench is distrust.
Say, how do you ever get around in this disorderly shop, anyway? And do
you mean to tell me you have been using these which are hanging on that
wall there?—pride, lying, hate, lust, deceit, envy.
Do you believe you can build a house with these tools? What is the One
who hired you to build the house going to say when He comes to see the
work you have done?
What's that under that old dusty canvas in the back of your shop?
Oh, tools you've never used? Some you never learned to use?
You mean you have been using those cheap tools all this time and
allowing these valuable ones here to collect dust and cobwebs!-' Here
is love, patience, kindness, gentleness, industriousness, zeal and suffering.
Having hastily scanned your shop, may I see the home you are building?
Not right now. Why? Oh, everything has gone wrong! "My wife," you say,
"is perturbed at my carelessness when I smoke and let ashes fall on the
carpet. And I get so angry for her running off to some party. I have
about decided to move from this location— I can't seem to make a
go of anything; it is all so discouraging!"
So that's the house you have made to be lived in! If you don't want me
to come in, what ARE YOU GOING TO SAY when God comes to see what you
have been building for Him?
You just haven't thought of that? THEN IT IS HIGH TIME TO THINK!
Perhaps this has not been you after all. But if it has, it is no wonder
you have met with failure, unhappiness and mental worries. You had
better use the equipment God gave you when He called you to work for
Him instead of what you have always been using.
On conversion, your divine Employer made possible every tool you need
to build Him a house, which is your own character. If you would
immediately call Him up in prayer and ask Him in faith, you will not
only be given the very tools you need, but you can acquire the
knowledge of how to put them to use by the study of His instructions
and blueprints, the Scripture.
Galatians 5:19-23 tells a little more about these tools to fashion our
building. For using the set that comes with the flesh and a carnal
mind, we will be fired from our job, put out of the Kingdom. And there
won't be any union of denominational clergymen sitting as a board to
tell God your work is good. But if you use God's tools, the fruit of
His Holy Spirit, then you won't feel ashamed to invite your Employer
into your house. He will even make you His son in the very house you
built.
Reprinted from the June 1951 Good News Magazine
