I love food.
Anyone who has ever shared a meal with me (or even eaten at a table NEAR me in a restaurant) knows this. Food to me is a hobby. It’s a borderline idol. It’s not good. (It’s okay. God and I are on it. It’s on the list.)
And when I say I love food, I don’t mean vegetables and fruit and lean meats and all that. I mean comfort food.
I love to eat it. I love to make it. I love to serve it.
Pasta-y stuff with cheese, creamy sauces and gravies and, for heaven’s sake, chips and dip. Meat. If it has to be white (fish or chicken), fry it, please. Southern homecookin’, lots of butter, bacon grease. Any kind of bread, roll, biscuit, whatever. (Okay, God’s telling me I made my point and I need to move on.)
Don’t even get me started about chips and dip being a staple of my diet. You don’t even want to know. Brad knows and has known for about five years now. It still makes him nervous. I admit, it is fairly disturbing.
I’m an emotional eater too. There’s a reason it’s called COMFORT food. If I’m sad, I need to cheer myself up with food. If I’m happy, I need to celebrate with food. Terribly unhealthy, I know.
(Seeing this all written out is really ruining my day, by the way. I should go get a snack.)
I like to give people comfort food too. It’s my love language. It’s not unusual for me to grab a box of Krispy Kremes on the way to work to share with my buddies. Friends come over and I make brownies and chips and dip, of course. It’s just my deal.
It’s my deal in ministry too. I’m an encourager and a people pleaser. I’m a terrible accountability partner because it feels too judgy. Rarely do I challenge people and even more rarely do I confront someone on a sin issue. I give people comfort food.
The uplifting verses in the Bible. The support that turns a blind eye to the problem behind the crisis. The engagement and friendship with someone with a different belief system and never mentioning Jesus.
The line between love and enabling has always been a problem for me. But unfortunately, the more I pray for God to ‘be Thou my vision,’ the more He sharpens my eyesight. That blurry line is getting more defined every day and it’s starting to make me uncomfortable.
God is starting to burden my heart with truth. Truth that will suffocate me if it is not spoken. And it’s not all happy truth. It’s the truth that stings, the truth that demands change, the truth that calls sin what it is.
And you guys, I don’t want any part of it.
People like me, you know? Not everybody, of course. Probably not nearly as many people as I’d like to think. But I’m nice. I’m encouraging. I try to write things that are inspiring and hopeful. And there’s a place for that.
But if all you eat is comfort food, you have no strength, no energy, no health, no LIFE. Serving only comfort food is not love, it’s enabling. And it’s selfish. I’m more concerned with how someone feels about ME than where they stand with GOD. (Ugh, so embarrassing.)
I try to push the healthy truth onto other people. You know, the grumpy prophets who don’t really care if people like them or not. They’re excellent truth speakers. (Actually, some of them get a kick out of offending others.)
I figure we can good-cop-bad-cop. They go get beat up with the truth from the grumpy prophets and I’ll pick up the pieces, encourage them, slap on some bandaids and serve the brownies. Heck yeah, that’s my kind of ministry.
Which is precisely the problem: That’s MY kind of ministry.
If you haven’t noticed, the past month or so the world has been shaken up like a bottle of Italian dressing. Crisis after crisis. Controversy after controversy. Scandal after scandal. Tragedy after tragedy.
If bad stuff is spaced out enough (and it’s not getting on me DIRECTLY), sometimes I can just kind of put my concern in a box and move on. But when it starts piling on, I’ve got to look at it. And once I’ve seen it, I can’t unsee it. And it becomes nearly impossible not to act on it, in one way or another.
My favorite Teddy Roosevelt quote is, “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”
The worst thing you can do is NOTHING.
Oftentimes when we don’t know what to do, we don’t do anything. It’s been my M.O. for years.
I’ll have a Christian friend living with their significant other. I don’t say anything. None of my business. That’s between them and God.
I’ll know somebody who’s starting to drink too much and it’s affecting their life and others around them. I don’t say anything. None of my business. That’s between them and God.
Racism or degradation being perpetuated in the form of a “harmless” joke. I don’t say anything. None of my business. That’s between them and God.
And I regularly think to myself, “Where is her mother? Where are his friends? Why doesn’t somebody say something?”
God showed me some scripture recently that is totally killing my plan of flying under the radar:
“Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” Romans 1:32
Paul had just rattled off some sins and qualities that deserve death. And approving of others who practice those sins is apparently just as bad as the sins themselves.
Crap.
But I’m not APPROVING, per se. I know what’s happening is wrong. I just don’t say anything. Doesn’t that count?
Brad told me the other day in regard to a certain issue in the news, “Your silence is deafening.” (Stupid falling in love with and marrying a grumpy prophet. It’s almost like God did it on purpose.)
Yes, we are all sinners and all have fallen (and continue to fall) short of the glory of God. But there’s free grace from Jesus because of His death on the cross. His perfect death covered for our screwed-up lives. So we’re all okay, right?
Here’s the word God keeps pressing into my heart: repentance. Grace, forgiveness and mercy are free to sinners with repentant hearts. Will we keep on sinning? Of course. We’re broken and flawed and imperfect. Jesus’ blood covers us.
But signing up for ongoing premeditated sin is dangerous. That points to an unrepentant heart and that is not what Jesus works with. His grace is not yours until you ask for it. And to ask for it, you have to know that you need it.
But who am I to call others out on their sins? I gotta remove the plank from my own eye. I’m a mess and everybody knows it, so who am I to judge?
Judging involves thinking yourself better than someone else. If you approach someone in humility as a fellow sinner, with full knowledge of your own sin problem, call them on theirs and point them to the life-saving solution you’ve found, that’s not judging. That’s called love. Real love. Hard love. Love that wins.
All that to say, God is calling me to add some variety to the menu. I will always serve comfort food. That’s who He made me to be and we all need some of that. But He’s calling me to grow in the message I share with those around me.
I don’t know what this looks like. In some ways I feel the need to apologize to people in advance for the tough crap God may ask me to say in the future. In other ways I feel the need to apologize for not loving my friends enough to tell hard truths when necessary.
But I have to remember that being an encourager and being a truth speaker are not mutually exclusive. I know several who do it well, and the wounds from those friends can be trusted (Proverbs 27:6). They are some of the most valuable relationships in my life. Their love for me is multifaceted, not just good news and giggles.
So I’m going to strive to be a better hostess and continue to offer “conversation full of grace,” but also “seasoned with salt” (Colossians 4:6). There will still be plenty of biscuits and gravy and chips and dip. But hopefully I’ll work up the guts to also serve something that will offer strength and maybe even salvation, not just a smile.
We can’t change the world until we change ourselves. And according to scripture, the darkness is only going to get darker, which means those of us who know Jesus will have to up our game and shine even brighter.
Lord, help me to love others fully, and value their eternity over my popularity. I’m not ready, Lord, but I’m willing. Do Your thing.
