Last week, after my work, I decided to tackle the problem of clunking sound, which has bothered me for quite some time, in the front of my car.  The cause I discovered inadvertently in one of my routine car maintenance is a malfunction stabilizer link (or sway bar). It was caused by a negligence from a repair garage – There is one nut missing after the repair and the whole link is dangling around the air; as a result, the link was not functioning properly in supporting the vehicle.  The mechanism of the link is quite simple – a straight steel link with a set of nut and bolt on each end. I thought it was an easy task 🙂 All I need to do is taking out the two nuts from both ends of the old link and put the new one in then I am done. So, I jacked up my car, took off the tire and started to work on it.

I ended up spent hours substantially longer than I can imagine in taking out one of the rusty nuts. All I can say is it is brutal. After several failed attempts, I finally decided to use my reciprocating saw to saw the nut off. The good thing is the installation of the new link was a breeze. I then told myself, “Thing is not always as easy as it is seen”. Sigh! 🙁

When I was introduced to the Christianity by my friends, they told me that all you need to do is “to believe”. I responded, “To believe what?” Then they said, “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 你若口裡認耶穌為主，心裡信神叫他從死裡復活，就必得救‧ (Romans 10:9)” My response to them is “How can it be so easy?”  They said, “Because the Bible told us so!”  The simple and easy path to the grace that God has provided makes most people wonder: it is just too good to be true. However, most of them didn’t realize that on the surface, it may be simple and easy; in reality, there is a hefty price being paid for our sins by Jesus, the Son of God, actually. No wonder someone used to say that, “Salvation is free but not cheap!”

After became a Christian, the journey of faith requires us to relinquish our rights to the Lord Jesus. Let me ask you this, “How many times our old self is like the “rusty” nut that I had just experienced won’t budge a bit?” It is probably every time when we confront it, right? This could be the reason why apostle Paul said, “For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 我也知道，在我裡頭，就是我肉體之中，沒有良善‧因為立志為善由得我，只是行出來由不得我‧(Romans 7:18)” The only drastic measure to overcome it, as Paul indicated, is the power of the Holy Spirit not our flesh strength.

My dear brothers and sisters, do you have “rusty nuts” in your personal journey of faith? I am sure we all have some of them. The question is “Do we know how to deal with them?” The apostle John taught us that firstly we have to be honest to God to acknowledge that we do have problems. He said, “If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. (1 John 1:6)” Then, John indicated that God’s promise would forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness, if we confess our sins. So, do you have rusted nuts? Don’t sweat! We can’t overcome them but Him – confess to Him and ask His help to overcome them.