My 18 year old daughter drove to Birmingham last weekend and sent me a text Saturday night that no dad wants to get. It was a video of here dash light indicating her car was overheating. She followed my advice and pulled over and checked her coolant and it was low, her solution was to just ad coolant and she would be fine. Driving from Birmingham, Alabama to Winston Salem, North Carolina with a coolant leak, just adding coolant was treating the symptom not the cause, no father who knew anything about cars would be able to rest until he knew the cause, treating the symptom only could result in being stuck on the side of the road. Such symptoms would be low oil, or low Freeon, low transmission fluid, power steering fluid, brake fluid. All the above are symptoms of something not the cause.

Another tricky symptomatic item in cars is tires. Tires cup or the wear unevenly, those could be symptoms of bad suspension components, alignment, or inflation.

At Service Advisor School we leaned the three C’s :

  1. Complaint or Symptom
  2. Cause
  3. Correction

Our job was to discover the complaint or the symptom the customer was experiencing. Many times folks come in and they say, they need a tune-up or they need fuel injectors and a poor service advisor would just do what they asked without seeing why they though they needed a tune-up  or fuel injectors. So as you can see symptoms are critical to understanding the problem but treating them alone is problematic as well.

Similarly our spiritual life exhibits symptoms, over eating, bad temper, over spending are all symptoms of  deeper spiritual problems. Treating symptoms without ever looking under the hood will eventually, like my daughter’s car, you could find yourself broke down on the side of the road.

Ask Jesus to show you. This week I asked what was going on as my symptoms of hungering for false comforters was raging….. I ask and He told me to Love on Him, Worship. I turned to that and found this Hymn I had heard many times but never heard if you know what I mean…WOW these lyrics went after all my symptoms.

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight;
Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;
Thou my soul’s Shelter, Thou my high Tower:
Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.