Are You Fully Coated?

Summer’s unofficial kickoff, Memorial Day weekend, is here. For many, that means celebrating the holiday with family or friends. You might be one of those, maybe traveling to another city or simply walking down the street to a neighborhood gathering.

The host of the picnic has asked each guest to bring a dish to share. Amid greasy burgers, hot dogs, potato salad, deviled eggs, baked beans, and potato chips, you decide to add a healthy option to the food table: spinach and strawberry salad. You put the spinach in a bowl and add crumbled feta cheese, sliced fresh strawberries, onions, and walnuts. For the dressing you mix some white wine vinegar, olive oil, chopped fresh basil leaves, sugar, salt and pepper. Right before the meal you pour the vinaigrette dressing over the salad, tossing it all together.

Once mixed and tossed into the salad, no part of the salad is untouched by the dressing. It fully coats all the ingredients – the spinach leaves, strawberries, onions, and the walnuts. Now I want you to keep that image of fully coated in mind.

Maybe you are not the picnic type, but instead are heading to your local swimming pool or nearby beach town. If either of those is you, then consider this image – fully coating yourself in sunscreen in order to avoid sunburn and skin damage.

If you are a follower of Jesus, He wants to be in, to touch, every part of our lives. He needs to be in us, and with us, not just on Sundays, but also Monday through Saturday. Not just in the good, but also in the not so good. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus desires to fully coat us. He wants to give us wisdom as we decide on a career or which college to attend. He wants to give us peace as we sit in the doctor’s office looking at those spots on our kidney. He wants to help you and me walk away from the water cooler chatter that has turned to gossip and slander. He wants to be in our addictions, bad relationships, stupid choices, messed up finances.

He wants to be in it all! And the truth is, nothing is hidden from God anyway. Want proof? – Hebrews 4:13; Job 28:24, 34:21; Proverbs 5:21; Psalm 14:2. There is great freedom and hope in the reality that the Triune God sees us and knows us, and wants nothing more than to be intensely intimate with us! Not to ridicule or demean, but rather, to lead, guide, and direct, helping us become the people He so desires us to be.

Psalm 139 is good place to see this intimate relationship we have with Jesus. The psalm begins with these words, “You have searched me, LORD, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely” (vv. 1-4).

A few verses later we see this question, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” (v.7). We then get the answer in verses 8-10, “If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand with guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.”

I now encourage you to read Psalm 139 in its entirety. It is such an encouraging chapter. It paints a beautiful picture of God’s intimate and pervasive presence in our lives! You might be familiar with these well-known words but didn’t know they are found in this psalm – “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

So, I ask you today, are you only allowing Jesus to touch certain places and keeping Him out of others, or are inviting Him to be the “dressing on your salad” or the “sunscreen on your exposed skin,” fully coating and touching every aspect of your life?

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