“Are you gonna eat those fries?”

My new nephew Cache Zee Bertrand is a stout lad! He has a wonderful disposition and will just grin at you all day long as he studies everything going on around him. The only time he gets particularly rambunctious is when he’s hungry and being a good sized 6 month old, this is fairly often. Cache on those occasions when his stomach starts talking holds nothing back in the flexing of his golden pipes!

And the boy can sing!

The mixing of his formula as the spoon sounds against the glass bottle appeases him slightly but he will not be still until that bottle is brought to the fore! And then sweet peace as he grins and slurps himself back into the infantile Garden of Eden where all is well. My brother and sister-in-law have the routine down so cold that they are usually one step ahead of the boy, thus avoiding these outbursts of hungry exuberance but Cache still demands a “between snack” snack that catches them a bit unaware every now and then.

You must crave pure spiritual milk so that you can grow into the fullness of your salvation. Cry out for this nourishment as a baby cries for milk, now that you have had a taste of the Lord's kindness. Come to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God's temple. He was rejected by the people, but he is precious to God who chose him. And now God is building you, as living stones, into his spiritual temple. What's more, you are God's holy priests, who offer the spiritual sacrifices that please him because of Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 2:2-5 NLT

Ok, my nephew has that desire for milk down cold – or warm in his case – and I do hunger for the Holy Spirit’s presence with a vengeance but if we are going to be built into “living stones” can we get that done on a steady diet of milk?

Five-time champion Jacques Anquetil's once said, "You don't win the Tour de France on mineral water." And the guys in the gym who are getting really big aren’t doing it on a tall glass of skim…So what do we need to eat to finish this leg of our eternal race or what diet should we adhere to in order to become a hardened spiritual rock and the structure of God’s temple?

Paul was talking to the people of Corinth and encouraging their faith to grow by stating:

Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you I couldn't talk to you as I would to mature Christians. I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in the Christian life. I had to feed you with milk and not with solid food, because you couldn't handle anything stronger. 1 Cor 3:1-2 NLT

My nephew has such an appetite that I told my brother, “His first words will be a sentence and he’s going to ask, ‘Are you gonna eat those fries?’” To that end I got to witness Cache’s first “solid” food meal – rice cereal – and he seems to hold about the same passion for rice as I do for brussel sprouts. We were however able to offer him up a little Ben & Jerry’s that night and the boy lit up! That’s what I’m talking about!!

What diet plan do we need to follow to have the kind of spiritual growth that will allow us to be used by God in the midst of this world and its hunger for the Truth?

The Apostle Peter had a curious dream and when I wanted to use this today I thought I would preface the passage by recognizing it as a big context stretch but reviewing this scripture I am not so sure it’s that big a leap. Here Peter is about to go and visit a Roman Officer named Cornelius who is a devout believer in the Jewish Religion who has been instructed by an angel to seek out Peter for a message about Christ. Prior to this meeting God delivers this powerful daydream to Peter in preparation:

The next day as Cornelius's messengers were nearing the city, Peter went up to the flat roof to pray. It was about noon, and he was hungry. But while lunch was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw the sky open, and something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners. In the sheet were all sorts of animals, reptiles, and birds. Then a voice said to him, "Get up, Peter; kill and eat them."

"Never, Lord," Peter declared. "I have never in all my life eaten anything forbidden by our Jewish laws."

The voice spoke again, "If God says something is acceptable, don't say it isn't." The same vision was repeated three times. Then the sheet was pulled up again to heaven. Acts 10:9-16 NLT

We can’t really grasp how disturbing this was for Peter because we don’t have the incredibly strict food prohibitions that the people who obey the Jewish Laws still practice. It was for all intents and purposes a matter of life and death. There were simply things you did not eat - EVER. The Kosher designation on some foods today denotes this law in our present time. My brother Rob worked in a very high end fish market in his youth and from time to time a Rabbi would have to come in to bless their knives so they were “pure” for use in cutting only the Kosher fish.

Are you starting to get an idea of how troubling this dream was to Peter?

Now think of it this way: We can be very comfortable drinking our spiritual milk or maybe we have advanced to rice cereal or Coffee Heath Bar Crunch ice cream…but what happens when all kinds of challenges come down the pike? What happens when God drops this big old sheet out of the sky and says it is time for you to get outside your spiritual comfort zone?

“Never, Lord,” we may plead and even resist more than Peter’s three times! We may resist ourselves right out of good spiritual growth! We may resist ourselves right out of becoming God’s spiritual temple! We may end up on God’s milk carton because he wants to know where we’ve gone missing to!

We can’t let that happen! We have to grab the challenges God puts before us! We have to let him drop a big old challenge right down on us until we quit crying NEVER! We have to get on with it and push past what we think is possible and follow God into a new chapter of the Gospel shared with whoever God sends our way!

When I was young we had steak at home about once a year and it was good – really good! I grew older and began mowing lawns and having a little money which I would use to buy things I desired. One day I had an epiphany, “I can buy one Whopper or I can buy a steak and grill it out back on our grill!” Well I was always hungry and I would go for quantity and purchase these huge tough shoulder steaks – and eat every morsel!

Peter was being asked to eat a big old tough spiritual shoulder steak in this dream when he was more comfortable with the rules of his milky faith!

Closing Thought

Here is the deal – if you want to grow and be a spiritual champion, you have to add something to your diet of milk!

If you spend time daydreaming with God (seriously you should) he is going to drop down some tough stuff into your diet for you to throw on the grill to cook and chew on! Count it as a blessing my friends because the bigger and tougher it is, the stronger you get!

God will challenge every aspect of your “religious status quo” and laugh out loud as you finally close your eyes in prayer and take that leap of faith with him! That’s not to say he is going to change everything – change isn’t a big character aspect of the Almighty himself – but he is the Master of bringing about those changes in our lives that make us more suited for service to him!

And it has a price – Peter took up the challenge and witnessed boldly for Christ at the cost of his life! He was led where he didn’t want to go but realized in the end a reward of eternal royalty!

Servant of Christ

Randall 

Every good gift…Does that include good smoky burnouts?

My father is a very conservative man and he raised us in the faith by deed and word but he also had the ability to know when to enjoy life a bit. It was a valuable lesson I should exercise more readily. You could say it was a gift he tried to pass on.

Back in the day we had to take our garbage out to the local dump and we must have lived quite simply because I never remembered seeing a plastic garbage bag during my entire childhood and instead mom and dad would re use our paper grocery sacks for our refuse. Imagine that, a family of five only filling one large garbage can a week! Well, dad would always load that garbage can up in the trunk of his pristine fire engine red 1965 Buick Skylark GS and drive it out to the muddy landfill. We would empty out the garbage, turn for home down Bolivar Rd and after crossing the railroad tracks a short way from the entrance to the dump dad would stop and say, “It is time to clean off the tires.”

What occurred after that was the application of 425 ft/lbs of torque being managed through a Hurst 4 speed T-handle shifter, the end result being a good smoky burnout.

You might say my brother Rob has inherited this gift for doing good smoky burnouts because one day as he and our brother Andrew were filling up Rob’s 302 Mustang at the gas station, the owner came out and was berating Rob for driving that particular car on the street as it was “…supposed to be raced on the drag strip only!” Andrew was very impressed with Rob’s self-control as he simply nodded in agreement during the fill up which included a lengthy and energetic scolding from the angry old garage owner.

What occurred after that was a three gear smoky burnout applied through a Hurst T-handle four speed that left the gas station owner enveloped in an aromatic blue grey cloud of recycled rubber.

"Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! Matt 7:9-12 NIV

So it appears my father was generous in sharing the gift of a good “smoke show” behind the wheel and maybe that garage owner might agree with Christ’s teaching including the word “evil” but I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder even if they are watering from acrid tire smoke! Rob’s gift is very tangible and if you doubt that expose yourself to a cloud of tire smoke sometime – it’s an acquired taste – literally. But how do we go about recognizing gifts from our heavenly Father which may be more subtle?

I love the exchange Christ has with the “woman at the well” and Jesus sums up our confusion on recognizing the greatest gift of all here in John’s Gospel:

Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."

John 4:10 NIV

Do we sometimes keep “drinking” from the wrong well when the gift of Living Water is waiting, clear and cool to refresh our very souls?

Friday I was dragging a bit and really didn’t want to make it out to our 7:00am Men’s Bible Study but one of our guys shared this great story that was a gift from God to me through him. He needed $218 dollars to replace a sum he had burrowed from a savings fund so he offered that need to God and KEPT HIS EYES OPEN for God’s answer and there it was – an offer of overtime at work.

Wait a minute that isn’t God – that’s just more work!

You could look at it that way – but you’d be wrong!

Mark traveled that avenue thanking God for the opportunity and when he received his check – and you knew this was coming – it was exactly $218.54! His wife told him God had even thrown in a cup of coffee!

Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.   James 1:16-18 NIV

We love this verse don’t we? We love it when the harvest is plentiful and we praise God for it all. But do we have the wisdom to praise God for OVERTIME and see it has his gift – his answer to prayer?

Here’s the thing about getting into a gift exchange with God like James alludes to here. God gives us the gift of his Son to make us “firstfruits”. What does that mean you might ask? Well it has a little responsibility attached to it for us – a bit of spiritual “overtime” if you will:

"Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God.”

Ex 23:19 NIV

Throughout the Bible “firstfruits” means a special sacrifice and in the spirit of exchange God gave us Christ and now we have become made into a special sacrifice – acceptable to God through Jesus’ death – and we must give ourselves back to our Creator!

Can you recognize that gift who is talking to you at the well when you are thirsty?

Can you see the great sacrifice of God’s giving up his only Son?

Are you willing to identify the need and make the sacrifice of your life back to God?

Closing Thought

We can’t call the gift of Christ’s death on the cross a “subtle gift”. It was horrific and having suffered that you would think he would come kicking down doors insisting on our obedience. Instead he stands there humbly knocking with the offer of new life.

This Father’s Day start thinking about the gift you have waiting for you. Think about the gift of Jesus Christ. If you received it already, dust it off and celebrate and go put down a good smoky burnout, I won’t stop you!

Servant of Christ 

Randall