Guilty at Starbucks!

 

My wife and I had stopped at Starbuck in Lakewood Ranch. She had ordered a Chai Tea and I had ordered and iced coffee. I really like iced coffee.  Anyway I got my coffee before she got her tea and so I stepped over to the condiment station to put a little half and half in my iced coffee. I really like half and half too. Just ahead of me was a gentleman who appeared to be in his thirties and very smartly dressed in a suit. He was pouring some of the coffee in his cup into the waste container in the center of the station to make room for half and half also…Did I say I really like half and half? 

I commented that I too needed a little more room in my coffee cup also because I like a lot of half and half as well. He said that he did too but felt guilty about pouring the excess coffee into the waste container in the event that a Starbucks employee might puncture the bag when empting it and create a mess. I thought what a life-giving person: someone who genuinely cares about how his actions may affect other people.

Then he said, that he was (a particular faith) that taught everyone to feel guilty about everything they do anyway. I said really, I’m sorry to hear that. Then he said, “But at least on periodic basis I can go and confess my sins”. 

I have friends who have this belief system and they tell me that the confession only helps temporarily and that they really don’t feel “clean” after the confession. They only feel like they have done another “duty”.  As I thought about this and this really thoughtful person who seem to genuinely care about other people, I felt sad that he was in a faith system that was not as life giving as he was.

Romans 8:1 says that Christ-followers don’t have to live with guilt ever again, because in Hebrews 10 is states that it’s not the obedience of rules that cleanses our conscious once and for all, but the life-giving sacrifice of Christ. I thought how trapped some who really love God and want to do the right thing may feel… when they really don’t have to.

I wanted to tell this young man that he could, “Stop feeling guilty about things that are under the blood of Christ and start living a life for God that’s fun and exciting and to

Make a decision today to ‘Be Life Giving’ to himself out of a grateful heart for what Christ has done for him”… But he was on his way to an appointment and quickly left Starbucks.

So I’m sharing it with you….”Be Life Giving ”.

Life-giving Meditation

 

Most Western Christians don't think a lot about meditation.  We will go come hear great messages.  We will read books. We will listen to praise and worship music.  We will go to our small groups.  We will read the Bible.  We will even journal a little bit.  But we don't do much about meditation. Meditation is the key to unlock our life-giving future.  It's the key to get our habitual mind (subconscious) to support our conscious mind, which is saying, "Yeah, I want to, but I don't find I have the strength to do it.  This life-giving thing just doesn't work for me.”

Here is how we meditate.  Our first goal is to spend 15 minutes. So we start with five and work up to at least 15 minutes every day. Find a place to be calm and quiet.  Every day we sit and see ourselves living the life-giving nature that Jesus’ death provided for Christ-followers.   We see it in living color.  We see what we are wearing.  We feel the heat outside, the temperature inside.  We see the people with us.    We see ourselves responding the way Christ would in that situation. We see the outcome. We spend time experiencing as many tangible details as that experience can hold for that amount of time.

Now, I've taught this for many years, and probably about probably about six percent of  people will take me up on it, and when they do I always noticed that they are the ones, two or three years later, are actually living their life-giving dreams. This is how we create a life-giving future.  We create our future inside of our heart, the hidden man of the heart, 1Peter 3:4.  If we take the time to create the future in our hidden man of the heart, it's it becomes more than just a good idea, it becomes our life-giving reality.

Mediate daily and be life-giving!