YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT – SWEET AND SALTY !!

I make no excuses nor do I lie – I have a sweet tooth that is especially fond of anything chocolate!  I rarely deny anything handed to me that is chocolate coated, dipped, flavored, pure bittersweet, white, truffled, stuffed, melted, molded, whipped into a hot drink or poured over ice.  I love it!  I even love it with sea salt!

Most of us in this country can relate to having a sweet tooth.  I don’t care if you’re the healthiest eater who only eats salads and grilled chicken, you still love a sweet fruity dressing on the greens and maybe some fruited salsa on that chicken, and some honey in that Greek yogurt.  Those are sweet additions – PERIOD.  Americans are addicted to sweet stuff and the disturbing health reports reflect that with a multitude of epidemic diseases.

That’s not just in the food we eat, though.  We take in everything sweet for food, music, movies, tv, and sports. Even our daily helping of positively charged devotions and sugar-coated sermons are now loaded with the equivalent of high-fructose corn syrup and Red Bull.

Based on the whooping sales of Christian-based books and movies (even in this bad economy), the industry is surging forward with prosperity and blessings – just like their popular preachers- turned-writers.  You can get positive-charged sermons even on youtube for free, or the ministry websites, and stores – anything to bring you promises of prosperity.  The catch is ‘it’s all yours’ if you buy into their books, materials, or especially if you donate generously to their ministry directly.  The bigger the donation the more ‘blessed’ and ‘prosperous’ they declare you on the way to THEIR bank or THEIR mansions, with:

“you can have your best life – now.’  ‘if you pray a verse hard enough it will come to you’. ‘the more you give, the more you get back’, or ‘buy my book, and learn how to find your purpose in life’.  ‘You deserve it.’

Sound familiar?  Those sayings are prominently phrased in both secular and Christian books!

They say you might even get as rich as they have if you continue to give them money, give generously to their ministry, buy their devotions and attending their stadium-packed tour seats. You will even get a generous dose of ‘positive enforcements’ from their glow-in-the dark white teeth and expensive suits to SHOW you how prosperous they got to be by being ‘positively’ tuned in with their god, praying a verse enough times and donating.

I seem to recall Jesus facing similar promises of prosperity. He was even promised ‘the whole world and all Kingdoms in it’  – after 40 days of no nourishment – if he would SIMPLY bow down to Lucifer.   (Matthew 4:1-11)  Of course he didn’t give in and he readily refuted the devil with God’s own Word.

So why is the majority of the church that claims to follow him doing this very thing – chasing after the riches of this world? Or, we listen to those who promise we can have it all?

Because the world says ‘Name it and claim it, think of it and repeat it repeticiously, say your favorite verse and sync that with prayer, contemplating it constantly – and it’s all yours, whatever it is you want.’ As long as things go our way, everything is fine and we don’t have to think of anything else – because that means we’re ‘blessed’.

Sound familiar?  Same basic message as The Secret –  the same basic principles of the law of attraction,  folks.   Wake up, Christians!

Maybe that was YOU at one point before you were a believer.  Where would you be now if someone else hadn’t poured a little salt on the gaping wounds of YOUR sinful nature by telling you about what the scriptures actually say?

Don’t like the word ‘sin’?   How about we dwell on the consequences of the actions that you find yourself in sometimes (not saying everything is your fault!)

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. Matthew 5:13

 

The most disturbing aspect of the prosperity gurus is how they continue to keep the sheep distracted with coveting the fine things in this world (and good health for those who donate the most) instead of pointing the masses towards desiring what’s to come -something much better. God warns us about the messages such false teachers spread:

 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.1John 2:15

 

If we constantly ingest sweet stuff, that’s all our minds and bodies know and crave. If we throw in some salt, the sugar cravings will subside.  If we take away the sugar, the cravings disappear.

The same thing in faith.  if we ‘ingest’ constantly positive-thinking theology, that’s all we’ll know and not the whole palate of God’s Word and message, especially the one that redeems us through cleansing our sinful souls.

I want to address a pertinent flaw that people have in viewing Christianity.  They seem to think that Christians are always ‘negative’ because we point out the need for sin to be admitted, confessed and redemption from it, as if we are the cancers because we point out the decay of sin instead of being positive and justifying someone’s deliberate meanness, greed, violence, or selfishness.  YET these same people are always the first to complain about the rudeness of everybody else and how greedy corporations lay them off, the schools are unsafe, the jails are over-crowded, and helpless people get bullied and killed these days.  The biggest complaint I  hear today is how ‘their lives are a mess’.

 ‘How do we stop it?’ they ask.  Tell them it results from sin and watch the eyes glaze over.  Yeah, that’s the result of sin – the very word that most folks can’t stand!

        And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof:                                     but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever..1John 2:17

BUT there is no other way except redemption – confession to the Living God through His son, Jesus who gave his life as a ransom, to believe in him, and walk in the Word with Him.  The world habitants are always warring with each other somewhere, and there’s always the poor, and the sick.  Something better is coming, something that will be untouched by the flaws of this world.

There’s the salt poured on!

Sugar coats and often rots. Salt cleans, often it hurts, just like the truth – at first.  God forgives.  There’s nothing else more life-and soul changing than the Lord’s redemption.  And it’s FREE!  What’s so wrong with someone wanting to start over with a clean slate, renewed all the way through and infinitely ?

That’s a rather sweet deal that others need to hear and have added to their palate!