What Colour Is Your Machinery?
What Colour Is Your Machinery?
For two and a half years, a property development project nearly finished me.
We weren't newcomers. We knew how to run a build, pay staff properly, keep everything above board. But the banks wouldn't move. The economy had shut the doors and we'd already committed most of our own funds.
When "pray more" stops working
Every time I went for help, I got the same answer. Are you praying enough? Fasting enough? Reading your Bible enough?
I don't know how many more hours in the day I could have given it.
There's a point where that advice stops being encouragement and starts being a weight. It quietly tells you the problem is your effort. And if the problem is your effort, then the shutdown is your fault.
Get back up
One Friday afternoon I ended up on the lounge, feeling so worthless I decided I didn't deserve to be there. So I rolled onto the floor. Then I thought I should get lower still, because God gives grace to the humble.
Lying on that floor, I heard God more or less yell at me. Get up.
I turned the telly on to distract myself. Fast-forwarded a recorded programme, hit play at random, and the bloke on screen said one thing: get back up on your faith. Said it three or four times.
That Sunday we walked into church late, just as someone read Psalm 37 from the stage. Commit your way to the Lord, and He shall bring it to pass. That last phrase went through me like a gunshot.
The practical outworking
Nothing had changed. We were still $4,000 short that month with no money left to shuffle.
I laid out on the floor of one of the kids' bedrooms and asked for real answers. What I got was three words: check your tax.
I dismissed it. It got louder. So I opened the file for a state construction tax we'd paid twelve months earlier, and realised we'd redesigned so well since then that we'd overpaid. I recalculated it.
The difference was $4,000. Exactly.
First the blade, then the head
Then came the pictures. Orange construction machinery on site. I assumed it meant funding. It didn't — it was the blade, the first green shoot.
Months later the picture changed: the road finished, lots ready to sell. Then again: every lot sold. Then finally, years into the future, homes built and kids riding bikes up the street. That's completeness, He said. Our funding came through that same day.
The question
In between, a Christian civil contractor generously offered to float us and start work at their own expense. I couldn't sleep that night. Next morning I rang and asked him what colour his machinery was.
White. So I said no — to the only offer on the table.
Months later, funded at last, we sat in a coffee shop with a different contractor. My partners said: Matt, ask him.
I think it's orange.
We stood up and shook hands on the spot.
What this means for you
God's voice is childlike, not childish. And He rarely hands you the harvest picture first. If what you're looking at seems nothing like the promise, you may simply be earlier in the season than you assumed.
Stop asking where you want it. Ask where He sees it.
