Just Real Quick: The Thing About Main Dishes and Side Dishes...

         
So this one is a short post. The inspiration for the title came on a morning as I sat in the Lord’s presence, wanting Him to renew my mind and really help me with my issues of unforgiveness, hurt, fear of not being accepted, fear of people…the list can go on and on.

Just Real Quick!!
          
           So the Holy Spirit began to pray for me and through me, as He often does when I really don’t know how to ask the Lord to help.

          I began to ask the Lord to be the most important person in my life. To take on the responsibility of making me happy. To be the one person I could run to and not be judged. To be the one person I didn’t have to explain myself to or even bother to fully disclose the details of any situation because He would already know. The only person who could tell me that in FACT things would be alright and I didn’t need to worry myself and be too concerned about it as long as I kept my gaze on Him. The one person I can trust to always be right and to always be on point, never lacking.

          In the past and even recent present, I found myself depending on people for these things I needed in my life.  I thought I could at least have that one person (as introverts naturally think) that would cover these areas in my life. A person I could seek advice from and find that they were always on point with it. A person I didn’t have to explain myself to; who knew me already and responded to my issues based on that. A person that would always make me laugh and happy. A person that could make me trust them to the point where I felt that when they said things would work themselves out, or even that the Lord would, I could trust them. I could trust them on that word and then essentially trust that the Lord would intervene—because they said He would.

          The problem was that people who had come to this point in my life eventually fell. Eventually either fell off, or ended up absent from us and present with the Father. When this would happen, I would crumble too. Just another payment to add to the growing bank of hurt in my life…

So on this particular morning I started praying and the Holy Spirit took over.

“Father, I want You to be my Everything. I want You to be the one who brings me contentment again. I want when everything in my life is crumbling I am not simply because when I think about You and how amazing You are to me I find this inner peace and hope.
Father, I don’t want to use only side dishes to try and get a full meal. You are my main dish. You do most of the filling while these side dishes are supplements. Help me to stop using only side dishes to fill me up.”

          I had to stop praying at that moment, as I do often when I feel that the Holy Spirit just dropped a golden nugget on me! I smiled and thought more into what I had just prayed.

          The purposes of the side dishes are to compliment or accompany the meaty main dish. It can be potato salad, rice, veggies – steamed or fresh. Just go with me here.

          And the main dish is the portion of the meal that is usually the heartier part and consists of a type of protein. It does the filing in a person’s stomach.

Now question.

          Have you ever tried to have dinner with just side dishes? Fries, rice and then potato salad? Or how about some corn on the cob, mac and cheese and then side salad? I mean if you eat enough it will fill you up eventually, but on a consistent basis without any protein in there, you really start to feel hungry more often, huh?

Unless you live an alternative type lifestyle, this diet is not going to work for you.

          But now if you have fried chicken as your main dish and skip out on the mac and cheese, you can probably get away with it. Or how about lasagna? You can definitely skip out on the salad or garlic bread if you wanted to and still feel pretty full, right?

          Okay, so I’m terrible of thinking up side dish and main dish meals. Then there’s the whole Jamaican thing and vegetarian thing and we’re from different cultures thing, ha! But I’m hoping that you see the method in all this madness.

People in our lives, even people we trust and hold dearly to our hearts, represent the side dishes.

The Lord, for the believer, represents the main dish.

          In this meal called life, we need both the main dish and the side dish, but most importantly the main dish.

          You see, if we treat people — who can never fill us as heartily as the Lord can — as the Lord, we will end up abusing their purpose and eventually abusing them.

          They are just as imperfect as we are and cannot completely fill certain places in our hearts. We cannot trust them completely to do that.

          However, when the Lord has His rightful spot in our lives as the main dish, we can then rely on people to some degree. And sometimes to a great degree.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be trusted at all.

          The big point is that the Lord orchestrates this meal by making Himself the main dish so that we are rightfully satisfied either way, then people come in to compliment what He is already doing in us.

The main dish can survive without the side dishes, but the side dishes can never be enough without the main dish.

Phew! Now I’m hungry…

Just wanted to say that real quick.

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