Keep Your Fork

After the table is cleared from the main course, and dessert is yet to come, the hostess will say, “Keep your fork,” meaning something sweet is coming—something not to miss, so “keep your fork.”

One time I taught a Friday/Saturday seminar to a men’s group that was followed by a teaching to the entire congregation on Sunday. Just before my sermon, several men got up and shared how the week-end seminar had affected them. I’ll never forget one man who stood up with a fork in hand. Lifting it up, he said he had come that morning expecting another good meal, something even sweeter than the day before, and he didn't want to miss a morsel.

What if we approached God like that! Yes, He provides our daily bread, but doesn't He give us dessert too!  After our main meal of the day, it is easy to put down your fork and walk away, as though our sweet fellowship is over. What delights we miss when we do not expect His desserts. If you don’t have a “keep your fork” attitude, you could miss the sweet things He has prepared for you throughout your day.

How Do You Smell?

If You Were a Perfume, Would Anyone Want to Wear You?
Wherever we go he uses us to tell others about the Lord and to spread the Good News like a sweet perfume. Our lives are a fragrance presented by Christ to God… a life-giving perfume. (2 Cor. 2:14-16)

If You Were a Letter, Would Anyone Want to Read You?
You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God. (2 Cor. 3:2-3)

If you have ever received a perfumed letter it was no doubt from someone who loved you—a special person who wanted an engaging scent to accompany his or her message. We need to ask ourselves: is my life a sweet fragrance to my family and friends? Is my scent attracting them to my message, or is my smell driving them away?

You are the Scum of the Earth

Some believers in Denver have chosen to name their church the “Scum of the Earth”—that being lifted from Paul’s statement: “We respond gently when evil things are said about us. Yet we are treated like the world’s garbage [the scum of the earth] like everybody's trash…” (I Cor. 4:13, NLT, NIV in brackets).

Maybe we are not being treated like the scum of the earth today, but Jesus spoke of a day when we would: “when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.” (Matt. 5:11) But Jesus didn’t leave it at that. He went on to say: “Be happy about it! Be very glad! For a great reward awaits you in heaven. And remember, the ancient prophets were persecuted too” (5:12). But then Jesus said [but you are not the scum of the earth,] “you are the salt of the earth” (5:13).

I could write a book about this analogy but I will emphasize two things. On one hand, salt makes foods better—sweets taste sweeter; naturally bitter foods, like chocolate, become deliciously palatable. And even more, salt is a preservative (you will find tons of it in canned and frozen foods!). On the other hand, too much salt can harm you—causing high blood pressure, strokes, and heart attacks.

Can you see the paradox? Though our saltiness is meant to bring the sweetness of Jesus to a bitter world, it offends unbelievers, causing them (metaphorically) strokes and heart failure. And for that reason they hate us. Don’t hesitate to salt the world around you for fear of being reviled. But be like those Christians in Denver who proudly call themselves the scum of the earth!