Bread of Life

This is for my dear friend Jon.

It has recently occurred to me that becoming a Christian is a lot like becoming a lump of raw dough. Accepting Christ is the final ingredient that sort of gels everything together and all the liquids and powders have meshed. You are now a squishy glob of dough.

You are then dumped out of the security of your mixing bowl onto a 'floured' surface. Great. Dusty ole flour. But the dusty flour is necessary to keep you from sticking. The Chef rolls you over, squishing you, mashing you, stretching you. Sometimes dough has to be punched (literally) and thrown around. Flopped back down onto the 'floured' surface. Over and over. Finally after the kneading is complete, you are ready to rise.

You are placed in a special place at just the right temperature, covered by a towel (God's hand) and allowed to just sit (or so it seems). While you are in your element, just "sitting" you realize you are growing. God will leave you here for just the right amount of time. He won't let you 'rise' too long. Trust me, one time I forgot about some homemade bread I was allowing to rise and when I came back it had grown completely out of the bowl and was spilling over onto the kitchen counter. God won't let us rise too much. We might become to big for our britches and get in His way. Too much "sitting" will leave us fat and useless. So it's off to the fire with ya.

Once the kneading and rising are complete, you are then placed in a fiery hot oven and cooked. (What heat are you in right now?) Not only that, you are placed inside some sort of pan that constricts your shape. When you were raw dough, your form was free. Now you have this boundary. You will be left in the fire just long enough to set. That way, when you are taken out of the pan, you will retain it's shape and the pan won't have to hold you together any more.

Now you are done. Oh wait, not yet. Now you will be cut, sliced, possibly torn apart, buttered, maybe toasted some more, maybe soaked in milk and dredged through egg and sugar and re-cooked. You might be frozen or allowed to dry out and turned into bread crumbs. You might be torn into tiny bits and fed to a duck.

Just remember this--you were created to bring nourishment. Bread sustains life. It is almost always present at parties and feasts. Countless children hold it as a prize possession that tenderly houses their PB&J. The world at large recognizes the value and delicacy of bread, although you will occasionally get a cashier that tosses your bread in the grocery sack under a gallon of milk. Just par for the course.

We are all in the process somewhere. Some of us are being tossed in the air and flipped over and over on a floured surface. Some are sitting, rising. Some are being baked, while others are being celebrated. And some of us are in the bottom of the grocery bag under a gallon of milk. Regardless, we are all here to nourish. God WILL use us in the right recipe at the right time, as long as we remember HE is the Chef and we are the dough. There's no hopping out of the mixing bowl or walking out of the oven. Each stage has a purpose that leads to a divine end.

Hijacked

I've been away for so long!! My computer was taken over by a browser hi-jacker, and I could not access my blog or anyone else's. It was a nightmare getting everything quarantined and operational again. The entire time I was dealing with this frustration, I couldn't help but relate it to how messed up we can become when Satan hi-jacks our lives.

My computer was hi-jacked one day without my knowledge. Some deviant just sneaked in and took over. I'm sure there were other "cookies" and spyware programs that opened the door for this massive take-over, but I was oblivious. I never swept my system for junk like that. Sure, I had "virus protection" installed, but I never ran a deep clean scan of all my files and operating systems to see what might be buried deep inside. Eventually my failure to do the proper maintenance forfeited my freedom to surf the web and I fell victim to the controls of the hi-jackers.

Looking at this from a spiritual perspective, how often have I viewed church attendance as my "virus protection," assuming that my punching a time card will be enough to keep me in line? Satan would love that because he is able to sneak in through some backdoor when we let our guard down. That's what scares me about these internet hi-jackers. I don't know where they come from or how they get in. Truthfully I can't spend all my time worrying about that. As long as I equip myself with the proper tools to search them out and destroy them, I will be okay. So it is with Satan. I don't always know what little thing he is going to use to try and get a foothold in my life. That's why it is so important for me to continually sweep my soul for "spyware" and equip myself with spiritual tools to combat him.

"Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour." 1 Peter 5:8

"Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you - unless of course, you fail the test?" 2 Cor 13: 5

I installed a program on my system called Spyware Doctor that scans my system each time I sign on. It runs other scans at various times and alerts me of "infections" it finds. When I am on the web and am about to enter a site that may have potentially compromising content (as far as spyware, cookies, etc) it will alert me that the site I am entering may contain things that could infect or damage my system and asks me if I want to continue. Before installing this onto my computer, I apparently just stumbled around allowing all kinds of "bacteria" to attach itself to my system.

We have so many tools with which to scan our lives spiritually and be cleansed and prevent infection. God gives us His Spirit, the Word and friends to hold us accountable (just to name a few). If we are not utilizing these tools to keep ourselves in top working condition, we will begin to slow down and eventually be crippled by the fungi and junk that will choke out our spirits.

Prevention is so much easier and more pleasant that re-construction. Once that infection gets into your system and takes over, getting order restored can be very time consuming and painful. That's so true in our lives. Not to say that forgiveness doesn't come quickly, but forgiveness doesn't always undo circumstances. While my system was infected, I was cut off from the outside world. I was stuck here - just me and my problem. During my absence, I was robbed of opportunities to encourage others and be encouraged by them. In essence, my system problem effected more people than just me.

I encourage you today to install some spiritual spyware doctors in your life. Run that deep scan of your system. You might be surprised at how junky it has become. But I guarantee that you will feel a new kind of freedom once that stuff is quarantined and removed!

"Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." Heb 12:1