At the restaurant they have half price sushi on Thursday
nights and free sushi on Fridays. You have to order drinks, but the area has
other bars that are usually packed on Thursdays and Fridays and for some reason
that one stays fairly empty. The nice guy who gives out the sushi said that
business has started to pick up on Thursday nights, but for some reason Fridays
are still empty. We were talking about that last night, why it would be that
people don’t seem to want the free sushi he hands out and they might go for
half price, but when it’s free at the restaurant they don’t want it either. We’ve
talked about it a few times because we’re always surprised. It’s really good
sushi and they bring it out in a beautiful presentation. He’s standing there in
a chef’s uniform wearing gloves, and everything comes right from the restaurant
a block away so it stays fresh and cold. It’s like having it delivered to your
own personal outdoor table, and one that you don’t have to buy a drink or pay
any kind of tip for. It kind of makes sense in a way that people might be
suspicious of free sushi on the street, but why would they go to the restaurant
for half price and not for free? It just doesn’t make sense to us, and since it’s
something of shared curiosity, we talk about it as I eat lots of delicious sushi and enjoy the
beautiful day.
When I asked the Lord what I should write about this time,
He brought that to mind, and compared it to the way that people often don’t
trust or accept the idea of His free gift of salvation. It just doesn’t make sense
to anyone who has enjoyed it why it is that anyone would say no, but that’s
very often the reaction of many people when they hear about Jesus. I know I was
that way for years – people tried to tell me in so many ways and every time I’d
think to myself what weirdos they were and that I couldn’t believe they
believed in that nonsense. I remember friends of mine who had been friends
before they were saved talking to me about this wonderful relationship with Jesus
they had, and me thinking, oh brother, now I have to stop talking to this one
too. I was very kind to them, or so I thought, in a very condescending way, letting
them know that I just wasn’t interested but if they wanted to talk to me again
one day when they had come to their senses I’d always be their friend. And then
there was my college roommate who I completely rejected who used to pray over
me as I slept late from being out all night – I’ve written about her before and
how 20 years later I called her up and apologized, telling her that she had been right and
that I had been very very wrong. And these people, God bless them, were still
ready to be my friends, when I finally came to my senses and understood what I’d
been missing all along.
God’s gift to us is a free gift. The gift of His mercy and
His love, the gift of Jesus going to the cross for our sins – we didn’t pay any
price for that gift and He doesn’t ask us to, all He asks us to do is to accept
it and run with it. And when we accept that free gift we gain our freedom, something
that no other gift I know of can do. We gain a new life, one that is full of
mercy and grace and love, and we lose those things that were harmful to us from
the life that we lived before. We lose our past mistakes and our unhappiness
and grief, our jealousy, anger, rage, unforgiveness, low self-esteem, shame and
guilt. We lose addictions and bad habits and destructive behavior and thinking. Those things will try to creep back into our lives, but the power of the
blood that Jesus shed on the cross is much more powerful, and when we receive the
gift of His sacrifice, we receive the power of the Holy Spirit who comes to
help us move forward and not go back.
Hebrews 12:1 tells us, “Therefore, since we are surrounded
by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every
weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let
us run with endurance the race God has set before us.” And we are not alone in
shedding that sin from our lives, the Holy Spirit is our helper, our guide, our
comforter and our teacher, and the Holy Spirit comes to us as a gift from God
when we accept the gift of the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross. 2 Timothy 1:7
tells us, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love
and of a sound mind.” Jesus Himself says in Acts 1:8, “But you will receive power
when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem,
and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The gift of the
Holy Spirit brings power into our lives. A power that is greater than anything
else, including our own fear and guilt and sins of the past that would try to
hold us back.
One thing that I’ve gotten to know as I think about my own
past and the way I finally accepted the gift that God had been trying to give
me for so many years is that for each of us there is a time and place of Divine
Appointment. Each one of us has our own personal moment of salvation. Once that has happened, there’s no turning back, even when we
ourselves may think that we want to because the going got a bit rougher than we
were expecting it to be. And until that happens, we can be offered as many free
trays of sushi as a nice guy wants to give us, but we’ll still be wondering
what’s the catch and keep on walking by. But when we finally have that moment
when we say yes, we wonder ever after why it took us so long to accept a gift
that is so wonderfully good.
Blessings,
Jannie Susan
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