Miles, Jars, and Faith

A few months back, we were on our way home from an out-of-state car show. We were about 90–100 miles from the house when the truck just quit.

At the time, I had no idea what was wrong.

I tried starting it again, and it fired for just a second. There was apparently just enough fuel left in the lines for it to start, but not enough to keep it running.

As I started checking things and running everything through my head, the possibilities ranged from a bad crank sensor to a bad fuel pump — which happened to be brand new.

I knew I wasn’t out of gas. I had filled up the night before, hadn’t driven that far since then, and I know the gas gauge in the truck is dead-on accurate.

So there I was, on the side of the road, almost 100 miles from home, trying to figure out why a truck that had been running just fine suddenly wasn’t.

I ended up calling a rollback to get the truck home. And trust me, that wasn’t cheap — but that’s a story for another day.

Once I got the truck home, I started going through the things I thought could be causing the problem. I found that I didn’t have any power at the relay for the fuel pump. I checked all the fuses to make sure one hadn’t blown, but they all checked out good.

At that point, I was thinking there had to be something in the wiring causing the problem — and I hate chasing electrical gremlins.

The following Saturday, a couple of friends came over to help me track it down. Everything we checked kept pointing us toward the fuel pump.

We had the truck up on wheel cribs, and one of my friends crawled underneath and started tracing the fuel pump wiring toward the back of the truck.

Then I heard it:

“Found it!”

When I originally wired everything up, I used the same size wire that was on the pigtail of the new fuel pump. Turns out, that wasn’t the right thing to do. The wiring at one of my connections had gotten hot enough to melt.

Apparently, the pump manufacturer uses a different type of wire that allows them to use a smaller gauge on the pump pigtail. For my longer wiring run, I needed to use a larger gauge wire.

Once we found the problem, I replaced the wiring with the proper size, put everything back together, and the truck was running great again!

This morning during my reading time, I came across the story of the widow in 2 Kings 4:1–7.

She had nothing to pay her debts, and she was afraid the creditors were going to come and take her sons.

She went to Elisha and asked what she should do. Elisha asked her what she had in the house, and about the only thing she had was a little oil.

He told her to go borrow as many empty jars as she could, then go inside and start pouring her oil into them.

She did what he told her to do.

One jar filled up. Then another. And another. The oil kept flowing until there were no more empty jars left.

I can only imagine what happened to her faith with each jar she filled.

The first jar probably took some faith. But after watching the oil keep flowing into the second, then the third, and the next one after that, I have to think her faith grew a little stronger with every jar.

The same thing happened after I made that repair to the fuel pump wiring.

I’m fairly confident in my wiring skills, but there’s always that little thought in the back of my mind.

Did I do it right? Did I miss something? Was that crimp good enough?

But with every mile I drive, those thoughts start to fade. Ten miles turn into fifty. Fifty turn into a hundred. Before long, I’m not thinking about that connection under the truck anymore.

With every mile, my confidence in that repair gets a little stronger.

I think our faith can grow much the same way.

The more I trust God — especially when I’m not sure what’s going to happen next — the more I learn that I can trust Him. One experience builds on another, just like one jar of oil led to the next.

And little by little, that faith gets stronger.

There’s a difference between trusting the C10 enough to drive it around town and trusting it enough to point it down the highway for another 1,000-mile trip.

I think the same can be true with our faith.

It’s one thing to trust God with the small things. It’s another to trust Him with everything — especially when we don’t know what’s waiting down the road.

But just like those miles in the C10, every time we trust Him, our faith gets a little stronger.

One mile at a time. One jar at a time.

— From the Shop Stool