A Yummy Lesson

There is a place here in town that many of us know of but probably have never been and I am talking about the Yummy Buffet! If you decide to check it out, well you're too late...it is closed! What I want to share with you is something about that place. Since I have lived here in the Gallatin area, that building has been named many things. Various restaurants have come and gone, each one with a new sign and a new menu but the outcome is the same...CLOSED! I admit that I never went into the Yummy Buffet, but I did enter it one morning when it was named something else for what I thought would be a breakfast. I was greeted with the smell of mildew, you know the kind that you smell in an old, closed up basement or in your grandmother's closet but this wasn't no basement and grandma was nowhere to be found! This was a place where you would come sit, relax and eat and I did none of those things. I knew then that I'd never be back in there, no matter what the sign said out front!
I often times wondered why that place never seemed to succeed? My son and I even bet on how long we thought this last place would even make it...he won! What I have come to realize and what the next entrepreneur who dreams to make this the next feature on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives needs to understand is that it aint gonna matter what's on the sign as long as the inside is messed up...and so it is with you and I spiritually!
We can fix up the outside, you know wear the nicest clothes, put on the face and smile and walk with a pep in our step and even carry the extra large family Bible from off the coffee table as we head off to church. We can go through all the motions, shake the hands, sing the songs and maybe even shed a tear or two and show all the outward signs that everything is ok when in reality, our insides are mildewing and growing stagnant spiritually! What really needs to happen is that we need to allow the Holy Spirit to come in and do a work that only He can do. That is why David said in Psalm 51:10... Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. The apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:17...Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; and all things become new. Notice he says "in Christ" because apart from Him, we can do nothing!
So let me ask you this question. Are you mildewing inside? Do you live a life that is constantly changing the outside in hopes that it will overshadow what is going on on the inside? Give whatever it is over to the Lord. Let Him come in and change you from the inside out and maybe then you can become the Yummy Buffet where people in this world can come and taste and see that the Lord is good!

Chew On That For A While...Pastor John