The Sherbet Life

Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you”, says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”

God’s plan for our life is good!  Like this bowl of rainbow sherbet, God wants us to have a vibrant life filled with so much and to know that His plan for us is for good and not to harm us!  But getting to the place where life looks like the beauty of this sherbet takes some time.  We don’t start out looking like this!  It’s a process and it takes time and its messy at times!

The ingredients for sherbet and a vibrant life is

Milk (1Peter 2:2 You must crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation)

Fruit (Galatians 5:22 The Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.)

Sugar (Proverbs 24:14  In the same way, wisdom is sweet to your soul. If you find it , you will have a bright future and your hopes will not be cut short)

The steps to making it: 

Combine  pure spiritual milk and fruit of the spirit (this may take some time as you have to wait for some of the fruit to ripe) Go ahead and process the  fruit you have bore in the process of life and wait to make another batch until those are ready. This is how it comes out in multiple colors. This may feel tedious and take awhile but necessary to  make it all happen.

Guidelines for fruits that ripen first.  Love, Joy, Peace are usually the first and  go well together.  Patience, Kindness, Goodness are second and they also blend well with one another and Faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are usually the last of these to be harvested.

Process until smooth. (Takes a really long time sometimes)

Taste and add the sweetness (wisdom) you were gaining while processing the pure spiritual milk and fruit of the spirits. Process again until smooth. Taste and reflect.  Go back and ask for more wisdom for sweetness.  You always have to ask for more.

Go back and in another container combine the spiritual fruits that are  now ripe and mix in with more spiritual milk . And repeat this until all fruit has been harvested. Again this makes the vibrant colors using all the different fruits in different batches. 

Place the mixtures in an ice cream maker in our case “The Maker” that’s been right there through the whole process and continue according to the manufacturer's instructions (which is the Bible and where you got the recipe and your spiritual milk from)

 

And that’s how God can make something beautiful out of your life! Skip an ingredient or rush a process though and it doesn’t come out the way God wants it too.  It may still be good even if it’s not as solid as it should be (not enough time with The Maker). It might not be sweet enough (lacking wisdom).  It may have too much milk (knowledge) and not enough fruit ( love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control). It may be solid, but its gotten a little freezer burn  from not using it when you should.  

And if you try to wait to have all the fruits of the spirit at one time and make only one batch, it will just turn out ugly brown.  It may taste good (although I bet it will lack some sweetness due to a lack of wisdom) but it doesn’t look appealing to those unbelievers who have yet tried to make a life with God’s plan! Your lack of vibrancy keeps them from even bothering to try it!   By following this recipe,  unbelievers can look and see that you are making something beautiful and they want to find out more about it.   You have them intrigued on how different your life looks to theirs.

  You might be happy with what you got out of life but God had the recipe he had hoped you’d follow closer to make the best out of your life!    He is still happy with how you turned out but He knows you would have enjoyed His plan for you so much more! 

So if you don’t like the way your life has turned out so far, why not go back and try the recipe again.  If you are in the process of drinking in the word, waiting for fruit to bear,  and/or waiting for some wisdom in your life, don’t lose hope or be discouraged.  You are making your life something beautiful each day you embrace God’s word, bringing forth the fruit of the spirit, and growing each day with God and seeking His wisdom.  One day the Lord will say Matthew 25:23 “Well done my good and faithful servant.” and I think he might add, “Your life was just like the beautiful life I  had planned for you.”

The Path Part 2

 

  Isaiah 49:10 “. . .For the Lord in his mercy will lead them; he will lead them beside cool waters.”

 

On the first post “The Path”, the path was taking a blind turn.  It had been easy up to this point to trust God on my walk with Him but now as it was making a turn around a bend and I could not see what would lie ahead, my faith began to falter.  I could go on and trust in the God that had brought me through so much, I could stall out and reflect on how far I have come in my journey with God and quit all growth with Him, or I could retreat back where little was expected of me.

  As I let go of my insecurity, as I began to reflect on my hurts and pains, I knew I didn’t want to walk back through all of that and re-live it again!  I knew my time sitting here and not moving forward was also of no more use to me.  So as I took God’s hand and he helped me up, I did not feel weighed down by my past or my present.  I felt hope! This photo is exactly where the bend took me when I decided I was going to faithfully, hand in hand with God, make the blind corner.  It led me "beside the cool waters” on this awesome rainy Spring day!  The path before the turn was not nearly this vibrant and beautiful.  Maybe it was in God’s timing that I take the time to reflect on where we have been on “our” journey, maybe sitting on the path contemplating where I have been and where I needed to go was exactly what I needed to do!  To sit there and let the winter of my soul finish its course, letting go of some pain and hurt I have felt so far in my journey.  Ephesians 4:23 “…let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes.”  Perhaps that is exactly what was needed so that my walk with Him would have the renewed vibrancy of Spring! 

As he led me beside the cool waters, I felt His living water consuming my soul!  There was a light Spring rain coming all over me and making gentle beautiful ripples in the water.  I felt alive and my soul felt radiant with God’s love and his peace!

Proverbs 16:15 “When the king smiles, there is life; his favor refreshes like a spring rain.”

GIVE UP OR GIVE IN!

Think for a moment what you would do if someone saved your life from a fiery fire! Would you not feel compelled to thank this person and ask them what you could do for them for saving your life?

That is exactly what Jesus dying on the cross did for us! He saved us from a fiery eternal fire and once we acknowledge that He has saved us, we are made brand new and we are to give our lives to Him!

If you truly felt saved from the fire wouldn't you naturally want to follow Jesus's way!  But too many times, we are saved from the fiery fire and never follow through on giving our life completely over to Him!  We may never give him any part of our life and continue doing the same things in the same way (topic for a different day) or we may give God just "some" of our life and keep the rest for ourselves.

The challenge is surrendering your entire life to Him and because of our sinful nature choices are made each and everyday to what we surrender too.  Sometimes we wave the white "I surrender" flag in God's direction and sometimes that white flag waves in sin's direction.  Either way we are saying I can't do this!  If we wave the flag in God's direction, we are saying "God I give up my life to you, I can't do anything right without you." If we wave the flag in sin's direction we are saying "This is just too much temptation for me to handle, I'll give in to it just this once."  We either "Give UP or Give IN"  We either Give Up our life to God or we Give in to sin! 

Personally, I "give in"  a lot more than I should. My prayer this week is to "Give Up" more! Yes that even felt weird to type but it's true.   My challenge for myself this week is to make those decision points stick out and take the situation out of it and reduce it down to the basics of just asking myself  "Are you going to Give Up your life to God, or Give In to sin? Which way are you going to wave that white flag?"  

PS.And I was thinking, the next time you hear someone say, "I give up!" it might be a great time to share with them a christian perspective on "giving up" vs "giving in"!