Is Your Generator Working?

By Dallas M. Roark

The minister had car trouble. The generator would not work. As he pulled into the garage the mechanic
noticed a clergy sign on it.

“I say, Parson,” said the mechanic as he worked, “do you believe in consecration?”

“Well, of course, I believe in consecration. Why do you ask?

“I was consecrated once myself.  But I didn’t get much out of it.”

“But don’t you really mean confirmation?" asked the preacher.

The mechanic’s face was a little red as he looked up to admit his mistake

“Tell me about it,” said the pastor.

“Well, when I was a kid I went with some other friends and after a time we all got confirmed. Along with
it I got a new suit.”

“But didn't you say that you didn’t get anything out of it?” questioned the preacher.

“Well, not what one would expect.”

“But what did you expect?"

The poor mechanic almost shocked himself on the battery. He had apparently expected nothing and that is all that he got. It was at this point that the pastor took his New Testament from his coat and asked if he could explain the Christian life to him.

“Now, look,” said the pastor, “suppose a man drove his car in here with motor trouble and suppose I went to work on it without a bit of knowledge or experience. What would happen?"

“You could tear it down, but you would probably make a mess of it trying to fix it.”

"But suppose somehow in the process you could give me your skill, your knowledge and understanding
of motors and direct it all through my hands and mind. What would happen?”

“You could do as good a job as I."

“That’s how the Christian life is to be lived,” said the preacher.

With that he opened his New Testament and read Galatians 2:20: "I am crucified with Christ:
nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of  God.”

“Now,” said the preacher, “you can’t live something you do not have. You can’t live obediently to a
command that is beyond your merely human ability to observe.”

The mechanic was very much interested in beginning life from a new perspective.

It is on this basis that one can pose a great difference between Christianity and other religions.

 The Christian must never separate the command for ethical living from the power of God
for living by the command. Where there is such a separation, there is a tendency to return to paganism,
at worst, or Judaism, at best.

Without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which is the unique fact of the
Christian life, the Christian would be on the same footing as the non-Christian. But the commands of
God are not given without the spiritual resource to fulfill them.