When I marinate meat, something changes. It’s not just a flavor that can be easily brushed off the meat.
To marinate doesn’t just change the surface, it’s a deeper change, tenderizing, making things truly different.
You can’t unmarinate a thing. When I put it on the fire, how long and how I marinated it matters.
Am I so surrounded by God and His word that it has forever changed me?
There are many things in life I expected would change me. Maybe I hoped would change me. (Like motherhood would make me a morning person with more patience.) What I learned (painfully and awkwardly at times) is that the fire of life doesn’t so much change us as it reveals us and what we’re really made of.
When the doctor says “cancer,” and the lawyer says “divorce” and the check out lady says “card declined” — what am I made of? We are humans. But, we serve a supernatural God and have the same spirit that rose Jesus from the dead inside of us.
There are rules of this world that we don’t have to follow — like living in victory during the battle, peace during the storm and eternity with Jesus in spite of my sin.
I went to the chiropractor last week and when he said “go home and at some point sit for 30 minutes with ice on your back,” my first reaction was “THIRTY ENTIRE WHOLE MINUTES? I’ll get a pack that I can strap to my back so I can walk around with it on.”
I’ve got 30 minutes. But, this world will push and press with every little fire and every big blaze to make me feel I don’t. As though I have time for not one thing — especially time to pray and read the Word.
It’s not easy to go to church right now. Not easy to do so many of the things that I would say “fed” us as believers. But, we are in a period of time where we must also learn to marinate with or without the “normal” church things. Or anything normal at all.
I must remain planted in Him. Pursuing Him. Martinating in His Word, His ways. Remaining in Him.
Today, how can I carve away time for Him? With Him? Where am I spending my focus? Lord, give me wisdom in what can and must be pruned.
Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
And whose hope is the Lord.
For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters,
Which spreads out its roots by the river,
And will not fear when heat comes;
But its leaf will be green,
And will not be anxious in the year of drought,
Nor will cease from yielding fruit.
Jeremiah 17:7-8
Amanda Elliott is a grateful believer in Jesus Christ, wife, mom, business owner and Benton resident. She believes we are each “built to battle” by a perfect creator who made us with a capacity for victory, a handbook for success (the Bible) and a spirit who empowers us to live in peace and joy. Follow Amanda Elliott’s “Built to Battle” column at www.mysaline.com/amanda.
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