The Sweetest Juice
If you have ever made your own juice, you know that the fruit is cut in half, placed onto the reamer and then pressed using the plunger, catching the pulp in the strainer and allowing the juice to collect in the bowl or glass. Or maybe you put garlic through a garlic press to mince it for use in your favorite recipe. You are in a group of people and find yourself doing or saying things that allow you to swim in the same direction as the crowd, not going against the flow.
What is the common denominator of the juicer, the garlic press, and moving in the same direction as the crowd? All three – the juice, the minced garlic, and going with the flow – are all imposed from the outside. The fruit rind is squeezed and the vesicles release juice. Some fruit have a middle section called a mesocarp. The garlic juice is released by pressing the clove. Peer pressure presses down on us, causing us to act or speak in certain ways.
God’s Kingdom works in the opposite way. It is not imposed from the outside, rather, it is cultivated from the inside. The world’s kingdoms begin outwardly and work their way into our hearts. On the contrary, God’s Kingdom takes root in a person’s soul then works its way outward, hopefully eventually impacting the outward activities. Seeds planted by God in our hearts, if not smothered or ignored, will grow and bear fruit in our lives and in the lives of those around us.
The bad news is that every single human being is infected with the sin disease. In Jeremiah 17:9 we read – “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” The good news is that when we commit our lives to Jesus, God begins the process of cleaning us up. We find this good news in 2 Corinthians 5:17 – “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!” This verse tells us that God reaches down deep into a person and makes him or her new. It is not some halfway cleaning, but rather, it is a full-on scrubbing.
So today, begin to trust the Spirit within you. Start to cultivate the desires and dreams that God plants within you. Don’t allow the world to impose its plans and purposes in your life; allow the plans and purposes of God to ooze from you, both in ways you expect and ways that you never expected. The juice will be sweet and delicious.
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