"Food to Grow By"

"For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee." (Psalms 128:2)

  There are some things that are hard to explain. When someone is happy with the new car they just bought, it is easy to see where their happiness comes from; when they express happiness in their line of work, again, it is easy to see their source of being happy; but let a person be happy in a trial or while facing difficulties, then you start scratching your head and wondering if there is something wrong with them. This is the product of living in the here and now, while dwelling in the there and then. Without dragging this out into some longwinded sermon about prosperity and living well, I wish to just summarize what I feel the Lord is speaking into my heart and let anyone who listens to look up the evidence for them selves. The reason is really about making it personal; your personal experience is the only real way to know what this verse is taking about. When the Scripture says, "O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him," it is making the case for a personal experience that must between you and God; nobody can give you a secondhand experience  that will even come close to the real thing. Reading someone's testimony or listening to a powerful message about trusting God is not going to do what needs to be done. If you want to know what it feels like to freefall from 10,000 feet, all the books regarding that experience will not give you the same experience you will have by doing it yourself. Sorry, but that was the best example I could think of in such short notice. The bottom line, is that we are here for a reason. God could have taken us home right after we got saved, and could have saved us a whole lot of trial and errors; but we are here because we must be salt and light to a dying world around us. Reading this verse, I can't help but think of the song, "It is Well," and I hope you can relate to what the connection is. No matter what this world might dish out, the spiritual food that we have been given to eat, can make everything taste good! No matter what, this is food to grow by! Rich Mullins had a song that said something about this, with the lyrics saying something like, "growing up to be big and strong," which is what Peter teaches, grow...

"Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found in peace, without spot, and blameless. And account that the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also with the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness. But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen." (2 Peter 3:14-18)