Be a Milkshake!

This post is a follow up to one from earlier this week. If you haven’t already read it, it might be a good idea to start there. Click here.

We had another stretch of hot dry weather last week. Not only did the grass brown in some spots, the weeds grew like, well, weeds. Why is it that weeds seem to take over a yard when it is hot and dry. Weeds continue to germinate even when your lawn is under stress from heat, humidity, and drought, usually thriving under those conditions. 

We often see the weeds and spend lots of time and money trying to control those weeds using weed killer. That is not a bad option, but do you know the best way to control the weeds? It is not continually spraying weed killer on your lawn. The best way to kill the weeds is to have a lush lawn full of green grass. Healthy grass helps to keep the weeds from taking over the lawn.

As it is with weeds, the best way for us to avoid destructive thoughts and behavior is to grow in our relationship with Jesus. The more we become like Jesus, and the more we allow Him to grow “healthy grass” is us, the less room we have for “unwanted weeds” to grow and choke out the “desirable grasses” in our life.

And how do we do that you ask? To answer that question, I will change from the image of grass and weeds to a comparison between a grapefruit and a milkshake. Isn’t it true that many of us treat our lives like a grapefruit? What, you say? We section off our lives like the sections of a grapefruit. We have our work section; our leisure section; our finances section; the what we watch on television or view on the internet section; our eating habits section; if we are married, our sex life section; our church section; on and on. We “allow” Jesus in some of those sections while other sections seem to be off limits to Him.

What does this grapefruit life look like? On Sundays, you faithfully attend church and on Monday morning you engage in a shady business deal. “That’s just how business works” is what crosses your mind. It’s late at night, the family is in bed, and you cannot sleep so you turn on the TV or sit at your computer and look at sexually graphic images. “What can it really hurt; I’m just trying to relax so I can sleep.” You stand around the office and engage in gossip. You think to yourself, “It’s just harmless water cooler chatter.”

On the contrary, Jesus calls us to be like milkshakes. You know, put some ice cream into the blender, pour in some milk, add chocolate sauce and your favorite candy topping, and turn on the blender. What happens is that it all gets mixed together and you can no longer tell the ice cream from the milk or the chocolate sauce from the candy topping. That is how it needs to be in our lives with Jesus. He needs to be in us, and with us, not just on Sundays, but also Monday through Saturday, and whether it is at home, work, school, vacation, the ball game, our your favorite restaurant. Simply put, Jesus wants to be in everything you do and say.     

So, if we allow Jesus to be completely mixed and blended into our lives, then we have less room for weeds and more room for lush green grass.

Today, invite Jesus to fertilize your grass so you can have a lush green healthy lawn, and not one overrun with weeds. In Colossians 3:17 we read this, “Let every detail in your lives, words, actions, whatever, be done in the name of Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way (MSG).” Notice the words “every detail.”

And remember this… eat grapefruits, don’t be one. Instead, be a milkshake!

If you are interested in digging a bit deeper, click here to find a similar post I wrote last fall.

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