A simple lesson from a blueberry

I love blueberries.  I can remember a time at my grandmother’s house that we picked ‘June” berries from her giant hedges on her lot.  My fingers turned purplish-blue and they were so sweet to eat right off the branch.  We would spend hours picking them so my grandmother and mom could turn them into a wonderful concoction of sweet June-berry pie.

I often eat blueberries every morning, not only for the natural super-food qualities but because the blueberries remind me of the time I was a child picking them for my grandmother.  Eating blueberries remind me of the changes I must have been praying for during that time.  With all seeds there’s a germinating, planting, harvesting and reaping of the crop you are tendering.

God reminded me this morning of the simple lesson from a blueberry.  When you eat a blueberry there's evidence of the consumption on your lips, your teeth, and every inch of skin or kitchen counter top.  The blueberries leave a tale-tale sign.  Just like picking the June berries at my grandmothers house it was obvious where I had been and what I had done by my purple tipped fingers.

When you immerse yourself in God’s word, by prayer and petition, it will show.  The wonderful part is how it changes the way you see God.  I call this evidence of the Spirit working by walking slowly in the garden with Him.  Don’t we all need to slow our walk with the Lord?

I read an update from one of my African missionary friends and she told of a story of a traveler saying the biggest change for her on while spending time in Africa was that she has learned to “slow down.”  Yup, I know that feeling.  Africa will arrest your heart, or rather the evidence of God working through Africans will move you.

There are people everywhere who are hungry to know God.  But you have to slow down to see them, you have to slow down to see God moving them, you have to slow down to see what God wants to do inside of you because He’s shown you something.  Then you have to let it germinate, grow deep, then bear fruit, then allow yourself to become the outward evidence of God’s love, life, and hope.

Growing in God is never a fast process, faith is a perfecting of your evidence of God’s word inside of you.  What exactly are you keeping pace with?  God’s word or the world you are living in?  As faith is the evidence of things unseen, think of this as your soul always being in consumption mode.  Our spirit craves for God but your will determines what kind of diet you will take in.  What you take in will feed you or defeat you.

Are you feeding on things, people, ideas that are not super-good for you?  It’s often when we check ourselves with this question do we realize that we can get so distracted with our daily agendas, diets, and menu plans.  Our hearts are the most deceitful part of us, so guard them carefully by what you take in and consume.  It will be obvious.

The evidence of God in you will be obvious like the stain of eating blueberries.

I don’t know where you are in your walk of faith.  But it has become obvious to me that we are in a hurry-scurry world of a ridiculous fast pace.  Some of you are trying to catch up, some of you are trying to catch on, and some of you just need your flame fanned.  Whatever the case, what you take in will be evidenced in your life in many ways.  Like the blueberries that stain my lips may God’s word be imprinted on my heart to live a daily life of delight in following Him.

When you have a heart that seeks God, loves God and responds to God, the evidence is clear and it will show.  Daily we are challenged to allow God’s love to be evidenced in our life.  Daily we get the opportunity to share God’s character with a hurting world.  Daily we GET to slow down and listen to God be evidenced in our life.  Daily we have to slow down to hear His whispers.

Daily we must slow our walk with the Savior.

Let the word of God invite you, clean you, but also change you to see His goodness everywhere you look.  Let’s God’s truth set you free friends.  Let the gospel stain your life so that others may know.  Let the light of His love be the evidence that you share.  Let it bloom full inside of you.  Find delight in the slowing of your heart before Him.  Nothing will change you bigger than the consumption of the supernatural!