Over the past few months, I have been asking God to give me ideas to write about. These past few days have been really cool as He is showing me different things and dropping ideas into my heart. I couldn’t wait to finish my housework this morning and get dinner on the stove so I could start writing. The stories began to take form in my mind and I was typing them out in my head while I vacuumed and did the laundry.
Laundry! Oops, I forgot I need to throw it in the dryer, be right back!
Done. Just an example of how we can get so distracted doing “life.”
Anyway…there are a couple of possibilities that I am super excited about. I have received permission to proceed with one of them and am waiting to hear back on the other. Please pray for favor and that God will use these topics to speak to hearts and reach many.
“What does this have to do with lima beans,” you ask?
Absolutely nothing.
I hate lima beans. I think it’s a texture thing. I went to the store to purchase split peas to make soup for dinner. The only problem was, they didn’t have any. They had all different kinds of beans, but no split peas. Not wanting to drive to another store, I decided to try a 15-bean mix that included split peas. However, the mix contained…
You guessed it! Lima beans!
I decided that I would sift through the mix and pull out all the lima beans. As you can imagine, this was quite a task. There were tons of them, and what I didn’t realize until it was too late, is that there were even lima beans disguised as another type of bean (they had spots on them).
As I was sorting through the beans, eventually I began to grow weary. I decided to be a little less cautious and if a bean slipped through here or there, a couple of lima beans wouldn’t hurt me.
It was at that moment that God started speaking to my heart.
“It’s kind of like sin, isn’t it?” He asked
“Lima beans,” I asked Him, “I know God, those lima beans are horrible!”
I knew that is not what He meant. He was reminding me that we can be that way with sin or compromise. We start out with a desire to serve Him and we are excited to spend time with Him, tell others about Him, etc. However, over time, we often start to allow little things to enter our lives or hearts that pull us away. These things take up our time, thoughts, and draw us away from our relationship with Jesus.
It’s kind of like gaining weight. We don’t normally start out eating a whole chocolate cake. We start with the small indulgences and eventually, it gets more difficult to resist and we begin to see the effects of it in our life. In the case of food, our clothes begin to get snug. In the case of our spiritual walk, we grow lukewarm.
In Revelation, Chapter 3, it says:
15“‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! 16So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. 17For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. 18I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. 19Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. 20Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. 21The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. 22He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”
If we are lukewarm God says He will spit us out (some versions say “vomit”). That is some serious stuff! And yet, it is so easy to allow compromise to creep into our lives.
On the other hand, if we choose to be zealous and repent…when we choose to hear the voice of the Lord and open the door…He promises to come in and eat with us. He says that, “The one who conquers will sit with Him and He with them.”
How cool is that?!
If we fill our lives with so much Jesus, we won’t have room for those little things to creep in. I’m not talking about doing more “good stuff.” I’m talking about growing closer to Him. Listening for His voice. Walking in the things that He shows you to do…however that may look.
And that my friend, is the story of the lima bean…
