Sermon Central
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I Found A Story Called "Pushing The Rock" Told ...
Contributed by Anne Benefield on Jan 19, 2009 (message contributor)
I found a story called “Pushing the Rock” told by Wade Martin Hughes, Sr. It is the story of a weak, sickly man, who could not afford to go to the doctor and his condition seemed to grow worse.
The man lived in the deep back woods in an old log cabin. Out in front of his cabin was a huge boulder. One night in a vision, God told him to go out there and push the huge rock all day long, day after day.
The man got up early in the morning and with great excitement pushed the rock until lunch, then he rested a while and pushed the rock until supper time. Pushing against the rock gave him a sense of meaning.
Day after day he pushed. Day rolled into week, and week into months, he faithfully
pushed against the rock. After 8 months of pushing the rock, the weak sickly man was getting tired of pushing the rock. In his tiredness he started to doubt his dream.
One day he began measuring from his porch to the rock to see how much he had moved the rock. After weeks of pushing and measuring, he realized he had not moved the boulder. As a matter of fact, the boulder was in the same place as when he started. The man was so disappointed that after 9 months he felt his work had accomplished nothing. He was tired and his dream seemed dashed upon the rock.
The man sat on his porch and cried. He had invested hundreds of hours for nothing. Nothing, it was all nothing! As the sun was setting in the west, Jesus came and sat down next to the man as he cried.
Jesus said, "Son, why are you crying?"
The man replied, "Lord, You know how sick and weak I am, and then this dumb dream
gave me a false hope and I have pushed with all that was within me for over 9 months, and that dumb old rock is right where it was when I started."
Jesus was kind and said to him, "I never told you to move the rock, I told you to push
against the rock."
The man replied, "Yes, Sir, that was the dream."
Jesus told the man to step in front of the mirror and look at himself. The man stepped in front of the mirror and saw himself.
He was amazed at what he saw in: a strong muscular man. He remembered that he had not been coughing at night. He started thinking of how well he felt and the strength that he had built by pushing on the rock.
Then the man realized that the plan of God was not for the rock, but for the man.
The storms, the trials, the heartaches, the disappointments, are all but part of the process. Don’t start measuring your success, trust the God that will take the process and build you up. God is stretching you, God is growing you!
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