Navigating The Road To Zion

Greetings & Welcome How many of you have heard the story called "The Dump Truck" This story was imparted to me a few years ago while I was in the military. I joined the military & was shipped off to basic training shortly after the death of my mother. While I grieved her lost I found myself in a bad place and very low point in my life. I was full of confusion, bitterness and anger, which indirectly affected my military career. To make a long story short, I was very hard to deal with as a friend, coworker and or subordinate.

Several months past; I was trying, as they say to "Pick myself up by my own boot straps." However, I continued to keep getting in trouble; for some reason I just couldn't get out of my own way. I think we all have had times like that in our life where we felt that we were in a "Catch-22" situation. It was then, that I learned about the story of the dump truck. In Short, the story goes likes this:

On a busy day in the city a man hoped into a taxi from the airport, heading to work. While driving in the rush hour traffic; suddenly a dump truck driver jumps out in front of the taxi. The taxi driver changes lanes and slams on his breaks, and just missed rear ending the car in front of him. The taxi and the dump truck ended up at the traffic light together side by side. The man in the back of the taxi was just waiting for the taxi driver to roll down his window and give the dump truck driver a "piece of his mind."

The dump truck driver rolled down his window & began to yell at the taxi driver. Just then, the taxi driver did the most peculiar thing. The taxi driver rolled down his window too & he smiled & waved at the dump truck driver. So the man in the back of the taxi asked, "Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital !" The taxi driver explained, people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, (frustration, anger, & disappointment, etc.) As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it & sometimes they'll dump it on you. So we must not take everything personal. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don't take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets.

This story is and has always been for me a great example of spiritual warfare. While navigating this road to Zion through these concrete jungles & asphalt desserts, Thanks Dawid COY, on the spiritual we will and many of us have encountered people wrestling with unclean spirits. Weather it be in your class room, work place or relationship. For example: Have you ever been around someone that just wants to argue, no matter what you say, they just want to disagree in order to debate or argue with you. The unclean spirit on that person weather beknownst or unbeknownst to them is now, spiritually speaking, knocking at your door. Maybe they want to be feed by feeding off the negative energy/emotions they create from you. Far to often when I found myself in those situations while in my youth I became my own worst enemy.

Like I stated earlier, I could not get out of my own way. I could discern when someone wanted to pick a fight, I just wasn't wise enough to know how to fight the good fight. I became older, not wiser, just older & I learned righteous rebuke i.e. "Correction." I used attempt to rebuke everything I heard wrong or contrary to what I believe. However, I would just find myself in another long drawn out argument which left me feeling exhausted & defeated. I was shadow boxing family and getting the work out of my life.

Be mindful of the dump trucks you meet family, while navigating between the tare and the wheat. There is a time and place for everything and everything has it's on place. Lastly, I leave with you "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Matthew 5:44

Till next we meet