So what does it look like to hold loosely to our thrones?

The throne is not mine. Not to have, not to take, not to protect, and not to keep.

What does it look like to live out this mindset in our daily lives?  I just love this true life story!

In January, my hard drive crashed.  Uggghhh!  You know the feeling, right?

All my files were gone.  Gone!

And if that weren’t bad enough, it crashed last fall, too.  Yikes – did I have any files left?!

Our IT department worked and worked on my hard drive.  The Director of our IT Department, Marvin, personally spent several hours on it.  He even tried freezing it!  (Who knew you could do that?)  But nothing.  Nada.  It wouldn’t even spin.

My husband has had some success recovering hard drives and thought maybe he’d try to give it a go.  So I asked Marvin for a favor – could I borrow the hard drive?

Now that’s a big question – especially after he had personally spent so much time trying to recover it.  He and his team are talented, they’d worked hard on it, and they’d done all they could do.  Marvin is an effective leader and a competent IT professional.  What in the world was left to try?

Now Marvin could have sat on his ‘throne’ as the Director of IT and told me ‘no.’  He could have hidden behind some policy or rule – or perhaps some pride.  He could have taken offense or taken my request as a personal insult.

But he didn’t.

And I just love how the Lord honored Marvin’s holding loosely to his throne.

Marvin let me borrow the hard drive.  He handed it to me and asked what I was going to do with it.

I responded, “Pray!”

The next morning in my devotional time, I read,

All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”

~ 1 Peter 5:5

I asked the Lord to search my heart and let me know where I was being proud and where I could honor Him more by being more humble.  I was kind of expecting a response about me! : )  But out of left field, I felt like the Lord said, “I’m going to honor Marvin for his humility.”

I hadn’t really thought about it like that.  You know, no matter how nicely I asked for the hard drive, it still takes a humble leader to let a non-professional IT person take a go at what they, as professionals, had already tried to solve.  It truly takes a humble, Good to Great Level 5, Christ-like servant leader to hand over the hard drive and say, “Yes. I’m glad for you to try.”

And the Lord was faithful.  He honored Marvin’s humility, and he honored our prayers.  My husband plugged it in, and it worked!  Not only did it spin, but he was able to recover a majority of the drive.

Crazy, right?

I just love that the Lord, in a sense, still used Marvin to fix the hard drive.  It just wasn’t via his talents.  It was in honor of his character.  It was in honor of his willingness to hold loosely to his throne.  And through that, God accomplished His plans and is glorified.