Fixing Your Windshield

Last year we got a crack in the windshield of our 2018 Honda Odyssey. We had months to fix it, but didn't. This Spring, that little crack became a massive one that ran all the way across the driver's sight line!  At that point, we had no choice. But we also had not options. It had to be replaced and the cost was HUGE. I sure wish we would have addressed that earlier, for FREE!

Lots of cracks, chips, little problems pop up in our lives. If they are on the passenger's side, we tend to forget about them. But they usually don't go away on their own. They grow under severe climate changes! And most of the time we wish we would have taken care of them much earlier, before they became such a big and costly deal.  Let's talk about that!

- Why are windshields free to repair and $1400 to replace?

- Why do we wait to fix them when the above answer is so clear and known?

- How do we sometimes make this same mistake in our personal lives?

- What is the power of Early + Often = Less

- How can we apply all of this to Faith, Friendship, Fitness and Finances?

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Excel Still More Podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson. I'm here to encourage you in your walk with God. Thank you for joining in. Today's podcast is sponsored by Cunningham Financial Group. John Cunningham is a friend of mine and a brother in Christ, and he can help you with financial decisions and future planning. He's been a big help to me and my family, and I commend him to you. You can reach him at 205-913-1720. I am so thankful you're here, so let's get started. Hello and welcome back. Thanks for joining in today. It occurs to me that the last two titles for episodes have sounded kind of bossy. Last week I told you to have a heart, why don't you? And today I am instructing you to fix your windshield. But I certainly hope you don't take it that way. This isn't about me telling you what to do. You will do what you feel is right. Instead, if you've listened to any number of these episodes, I hope you understand that this is really about things that I am telling myself, things that I need to hear. And for well over two years now, and honestly somewhere around 20 years of preaching, I've been working under this assumption that the things that I need to hear, other people need to hear as well. And things that I should have done and would have done differently, as you will hear today, may be able to save other people a lot of pain, or specifically today, a lot of money. Because I want to talk to you about a windshield specifically from a 2018 Honda Odyssey. I don't know if you have any chips or cracks in your windshield. If you're driving right now, maybe you can do a quick assessment. So the story that I use to introduce the point today might not apply directly to you, but if it does, and nothing else happens good in the next 20 minutes, I may be able to save you a bunch of cash. This is by no means a sponsorship episode or anything like that. I just mean through my pain, you may be able to keep money in your wallet to the tune of $1,360. So let me tell you the story rather quickly today that led to that financial bomb and then move into the figurative application portion of this. We aren't really talking about windshields today. In fact, I want to look at the four F's that we used very early on in the podcast episodes and is still a weekly staple of the Excel Stillmore Journal Faith, Friendship, Fitness, and Finances, and see if we can make some application today to shore up those things now while we can before it gets very costly. Okay, so at this point you probably can guess what happened. I already told you that we have a decently new Honda Odyssey, and about six months ago a rock just jumped up and chipped it. One of those little star cracks that the windshield gets. It was over on the right side, on the passenger side, so Summer and I did what any responsible driver would do. We completely ignored it. I seem to recall there may have been like a ten second conversation about, hey, we should get somebody to fill that thing, but we quickly forgot. Well, then you may know that we had a rather harsh winter. It got super cold, like snowy cold here, and the change of temperature can have some effect on objects like glass. And so that chip, that little star, started running in both directions. And so a few months ago in January, we started to note that it had run about twelve inches to the left and about twelve inches to the right. At this point, it was noticeable and annoying, but really only an annoyance for the passenger who is not driving the vehicle. And at this point, I thought this is probably going to cost me, so I'll just ride it out for a while. Well, that leads me up to about three weeks ago when we had another abrupt temperature change, and the crack ran all the way to the far left end of the windshield. And I kid you not, it ran directly through my sight line. Basically, I know what it's like to have bifocals, even though I don't have bifocals, because that's the experience of driving that van. There is this weird line right through the middle that kind of changes images a little bit, and I can never tell if I want to look over the line or under the line. So at that point, when it became absolutely unignorable, I thought, we need to get this thing fixed. So I went to the Safelite website. You know the jingle, Safe Light Repair, Safe Light Replace. And it said, click here if you have a crack, and I clicked it, and it had me add in my vehicle, age, and model and all that kind of stuff. And then it asked a fateful question. Is your crack bigger or smaller than a dollar bill? Now that may not seem like that big of a distinction, but I assure you it is. I came to find out later that if the crack on my windshield had been smaller than a dollar bill, my auto insurance would have completely covered it, and SafeLight would have repaired it for free. It is at this point that I make a public service announcement. If you have a crack in your windshield that is smaller than a dollar bill, it doesn't matter where it is, get it fixed. Check out your guyco.com, your safe light, whatever, it won't cost you anything. Of course, I had to click larger than a dollar bill. There was this little spinning icon as the computer decided how much it was going to hurt me, and the number came back. We can fix you up for $1,360. I'll just be straight with you here. That was a very unpleasant moment. Over the next few minutes, through Googling, I figured out that basically our windshields on newer vehicles have more tech on and in them than the original space shuttle. All that webbing stuff behind your rear view mirror, coating and calibrating and all of that. Now you might be thinking, hey, you just need to go and get your auto insurance to do it for you. So I went and did that, and maybe I will do an episode in the future called Lower Your Deductible. Because my deductible for such things was even higher than that number. So anyway, long story long, we have a new windshield, looks great. Total cost, nearly $1,400. How much did it cost me to wait? How much did it cost me to ignore it while it was ignorable? How much did it cost me to wait until it was unavoidable and irreparable to go for an all-out replacement? A lot. And so on the surface today in the first half of this episode, if that can help you avoid such a cost, then you'll have a little money for Christmas this year. But I think we both know that there is more at stake here than that. I got to thinking in my past, and maybe you can do so as well, please don't do this for long. But to help concrete in something that we can put into dynamic usage today, I reflected back, and maybe you can as well, on problems that sprung up in different facets of my life. I saw them, I saw the crack, maybe it was my fault, maybe it had nothing to do with me, but there it was. And at that point to just address it, to just have the conversation, to simply repent and make the change, or go out of my way to make it better would have cost me a little bit of time and attention in that moment, but it would have been over. And yet, like so many others, I waited. It wasn't directly in my line of sight, it was a peripheral problem. But have you noticed how they don't go away? There is some extreme temperature change, some climate alteration, and there it goes, growing and spreading until it's right in front of my face, except it's much larger than a dollar bill, and it costs a lot more than that as well. Maybe that relationship has gone rotten over time. Maybe that bad habit has become an addiction. It's become apparent that this is a major issue and can no longer be avoided. But by then it costs so much to fix. Total replacement may be necessary and it hurts, and it hits you where it hurts, and it's hard in a way that it never had to be. And maybe you said to yourself back then, I will never let a small issue become a larger one because I refused to be disciplined enough, attentive enough to handle it early when it would have been so much easier to fix. I really want to turn this to some positive things because I want you to see that if we will fix these windshields when the cracks first occur, no matter how often they occur, we can keep our sight line clear, we can avoid unimaginable costs, and we can celebrate the power of penitence and restoration without it having to hurt so much. And to help us see that, I want to wrap up today by talking to you about those four F's, as I mentioned in the intro, that have been such a big deal for me over the last two and a half years. They are categorized as follows Faith, that is the condition of my relationship with God and how well I see him. Friendship, my relationship with people that God has put in my life and how well I see them. Fitness, the vessel that God has allowed me to possess in this life and how properly I view it, and finances, all of the resources that God has allowed into my life that really work in between and around all of the other relationships I just mentioned. Okay, let's dig in on those four things. We are assessing potential problems, which isn't the most enjoyable practice in the world, but if it means catching things early and avoiding future problems, it's a great usage. So start with faith. That is your relationship with God, your dynamic trust. That's a term I used in a sermon on faith yesterday. Your complete dependency upon Him with your life and the way that it changes you to grow in a dynamic way. Take a look around the windshield on that today. How do you see God? Are there any little cracks there, any doubts or worries, any fears that you're tempted to just ignore, it will probably go away. What I'm telling you is we can work on that now, and it can really go away, and it won't cost you very much. If you have a doubt or a concern, address it. Study it, have a conversation with someone you think it's difficult to do now, wait until you're at catastrophic visual failure and tell me about how difficult it is to fix. Because once we let it get out of control, there is this terrible sense of shame and embarrassment. This is when people come forward and finally say, My life is a total disaster. Please help me. And we will help you. But you could have come forward six months ago when it was just a little nagging issue, and we would have been long past it by now. Take some time this week and think about your relationships. Maybe it's in your family, your marriage, or with your kids, maybe it's someone you work with or even at church, but if there is some small crack, maybe it had nothing to do with you, a rock just popped up out of the road, maybe it's nobody's fault, but it's a small, visible problem. That is your moment. You can handle it with ease, but also with intentionality. It's well within your control and you know what to do. But how many people have come into my office far past that stage? There's a crack straight across their sight line, and the cost to repair it just seems like more than they can afford. And truth be told, sometimes it is, and those things aren't able to be repaired. Praise be to God for his mercy, but also praise be to God for his wisdom. The wisdom that says if your relationships crack occasionally, fix them early and often, and eventually you'll repair them less, but it will never get beyond your control. A quick example of this that I've taught often is with our children. Kids can really test us in their growing up stages. It's almost like they throw pebbles at our windshield just for fun. But listen, when it comes to discipline, to handling that, to addressing it early, plus often equals less. Address every issue every time as early as possible. Patch those cracks while they're not costly, and eventually you'll be in a lot better shape. I think that's true of marriages and everything else. Sometimes the effect of waiting makes it a lot bigger than the initial cause. I don't know what cracked my windshield, but it was probably a tiny pebble that needed a tiny bit of glue. But I waited until it looked like somebody had thrown a seven iron into my windshield before I did what I should have done a while ago. Thirdly, and I know I probably need to tread lightly here, but what about fitness? What about your body? I know there are uncontrollable things and genetic things and all kinds of aspects that sometimes make you say, that crack is going to run all the way across this thing, and there's nothing I can do about it. Okay, you can say that, I'm not mad at you, and you can tell me how that rock chip that started it all had nothing to do with you, and I'm not here to argue with you. But I wonder what would have happened if you hadn't made excuses years ago and had said, you know what, I need to take better care of my body while it's still within that range of workability. Maybe you waited until things got pretty dire, pretty bad, and now you're still having to work on your body to stay alive, to stay mobile, but it's a lot harder, isn't it? The cost has gone up. I don't want to depress you if that's your situation, so I'll just put it to you this way whatever you have going on with your body that can be helped, whatever it is that can be repaired by personal discipline, I guarantee you that crack is as small as it's ever going to be. Does that make sense? If you wait another six months or another year, it's just going to keep running until it is right in front of you and it's all that you can see. Whatever the cost is today, and I'm sorry if it's high, especially if it's of no doing of your own, it'll cost even more later. So let's address it while we can. And then, of course, finally, we can talk about finances. Maybe we're talking about debt, maybe you're talking about putting aside funds to help people, to love people. Whatever obstacle is in the way of that, that obstacle will always get bigger and be tougher to overcome later. So if there is some budgetary mistake you keep making or some heart issue in you that's preventing you from being charitable, let's just fix that now. Let's do that. Because we certainly don't want to be facing Jesus one day, and he says, What's that line right through my sight when I look at you? What's this unavoidable obstruction between us? And I just never want it to be greed, something that I really could have dealt with a long time ago. All right, that's it. If nothing else, maybe I saved you 1400 bucks, but this is about something more valuable than that. This is about early and often with discipline and while you can, fixing those little cracks in faith and friendship and fitness and finances, and keeping our sight clear so we will know where we're going. For you today, that might start by fixing your windshield. Thank you so much for joining in today. If you enjoyed this program, consider sharing it with your family and your friends. And if you're just in search of deeper Bible study or you want to share the message of Jesus with the children in your life, remember to go to creation2revelation.com. This wonderful company, run by Christians, provides beautiful illustrations of scripture from beginning to end, putting the spotlight on Jesus. Excel still more.