Eat This Book Part 2

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Friday, June 12, 2015
Jeff Lampl

“So I approached him and asked him to give me the little scroll. 'Yes, take it and eat it,' he said.  'At first it will taste like honey, but when you swallow it,
it will make your stomach sour!'" 
Revelation 10:9 (NLT)

In the last book of the Bible, Revelation, John adds to what Ezekiel had written and notes that chewing on Scripture will not always taste like honey.  Sometimes it goes in smoothly but as time goes on God’s word and your desires don’t mesh all that well.   It’s actually possible to be more miserable after becoming a believer than before becoming one.   The “before” life doesn’t worry about God’s way vs. your way.   It’s just do your own thing.   But the “after becoming a believer” life always entails God leaving you not where you are but taking you somewhere you might not want to go, yet is exactly that place where you need to be in order to live the blessed life.  

Our lives with scripture are to be practiced to the end that Paul wrote about when he said,
 “until Christ is formed in you”    Galatians 4:19

As John said,
“At first it will taste like honey, but when you swallow it, it will make your stomach sour”
                                                   Revelation 10:9

And as Ezekiel later added,
“And I will give you  . . . . new and right desires, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will  . . . . give you a new heart, one that wants to obey”              Ezekiel 36:26 (NLT)

Have you noticed that “new and right desires” do not automatically remove old and wrong ones?   Most of us are stuck with some degree of both with in this life, and that means that sometimes, maybe often, the path to the unforced rhythms of Grace starts with doing the exact opposite of what we want to do.    

Sometimes, maybe often, raw, white knuckled, painful, gut wrenching obedience is the most telling sign of the Holy Spirit at work in you.

 
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