Cedar Hill, TX
Dec 4, 2000
More on giving up vehicles
“So how are you folks doing for vehicles these days?” our friend John* asked us.
“Some friends of ours from Canada are bringing us their 1991 Pontiac Grand Prix in a few weeks. Then we plan to retire our 1981 Chevette. Why do you ask?” Robert replied.
“Well, I have a 1990 Mitsubishi 4WD truck that I’m not using. It needs some work, but I’ll pay to get it fixed up for you if you’re interested. It’s at the Auto Repair Shop.”
“Wow, that’s great”, I responded. “Robert’s been wanting a truck for a long time and a truck with 4WD – we could use it to go camping at our son’s cabin in the Kiamichi wilderness in Oklahoma. And we could retire our 1984 Olds and that would get us into the 90’s with our vehicles. Thank you Jesus!”
“The only thing is – we won’t have the funds to repair the truck until early next year”, John concluded.
“That’s okay. We can wait.” We had a great time with our friends that night two weeks before Thanksgiving.
Then a week later as we were looking the Mitsubishi truck over, the owner of the Auto Repair Shop came out to talk to Robert. “I have a missionary acquaintance in Mexico who needs a truck just like this for his work and he has the funds to pay for the repairs. Talk it over with John and tell me what you want to do.”
As Robert and I discussed this, it took us less than 10 minutes to make the decision. We knew we had to let the Mexico missionary have the truck. You may be thinking that when someone has been through the things that we’ve been through, that this would be an easy thing to do.
Wrong! It hurt more than all the other times we’ve given vehicles away. We really wanted that truck. But in our walk with the Lord, there is no retirement…there is no sense of “Now, I have it made. I can relax.” The call to ‘take up your cross and follow Jesus’ is just as true for older Christians as it is for young Christians. The command to ‘live by faith’ continues and so we continue to trust our Heavenly Father with our lives.
*not his real name