The Winning Piece

It was a small adjustment that could make a big difference. Sure, it was against NASCAR rules, but almost everyone else was doing it. So crew chief Tim Shutt crawled under the No. 20 car of Mike McLaughlin, who races on the NASCAR Busch circuit.

"Joe [Gibbs, team owner] is adamant that we don't cheat," says Shutt, a relatively new believer who encountered Christ at a Christian retreat for participants in the racing industry. "Most teams figure that as long as you get away with it, it's not cheating."

"I said to Mike that morning in practice, 'If we're no good in practice, I'll put this piece—the illegal piece—on. Probably 30 other teams are doing it." I was justifying it.

"I got up under the car, I got halfway through putting it on, and that verse, 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God,' came flashing in red in front of me, and whoa, that was it. I said, 'I'm leaving this up to you, God.'" Shutt didn't put the piece on the car.

McLaughlin won the race. It was Talladega, one of the biggest races of 2001.

"When we won, the first thing that came to my mind was that verse," Tim says. "God wanted to show himself to me."

You see, God imposes limitations on all our lives, in one way or another. A discerning person doesn’t fight those; he receives them and sees them as God’s blessing, not God’s curse.