We were doing some late season wood splitting last Saturday morning to clean up the “wood-yard” of the place. The wood was a multi-variety that I had accumulated from various sources. My criterion for obtaining wood is number one, is it easy to cut up, and two, is it easy to get to. Oak is great, but we will clean up anything except Pine. It burns too fast and creates too much creosote if it is not absolutely dry. We have already split and stacked the pecan and oak that I had obtained earlier in the year. So I ran the splitter and Barb threw it on the 20 foot trailer. We are recovering in our bodies from the infrequent prolonged activity. But we apply the Word that says he restores our youth like the eagles, so we are getting over it (Psalms 103:5). At this point in life, it helps to apply the Word first and anything else that helps. But the wood is split. At our convenience we will stack it in the bins and we should be set for winter with a bin of dry wood from last year, a bin of somewhat dry wood from an earlier splitting, and this wood that can be mixed in for longer burning. It will of course be drying more and more as we go into the winter.
As I was operating the 20 ton hydraulic splitter, I observed the lesson to learn. All I do is put the wood in place and pull the lever. The splitter applies the power to press the heavy wedge-shaped blade through the gnarly wood to split it. That is how we apply the Word of God that brings about change in our life and circumstances. By the direction of the Holy Spirit we get a Word from God. By the faith of our heart and the words of our mouth we “pull the lever.” The power is in the Word of God. It will do the work. That is how I obtained the healing of my back. I kept applying the Word (Luke 3:5) by speaking it out loud, with attitude, to my back, telling it the way it was going to be. Amazingly, after two weeks of that and two immediate tests, for months now, there is no back or leg pain, where there was constant, daily pain. This is the principle that works in all areas of life. The power is in the Spirit-directed Word. All we do is line the chunk of wood up to the blade of the splitter and hold it there while we hold the lever down, until the chunk of wood is split. Some pieces are tough. You have to reposition the wood and get it from a different angle. Some are big. It takes multiple trips to get the whole chunk split up. But the operation is the same. Get the situation on the splitter and hold the lever down until it is split. Now that wood will burn!