CONVERSATIONS

Who are you? If people would describe what kind of person you are, what would they say? Not what would they truthfully say? How do others perceive you. Do they perceive you as an intelligent person or a know-it-all? Do they perceive you as caring or overbearing? Do they look at you and say you're a child of God or do they see you as a preachy judgmental religious fanatic with an attitude of nonacceptance?

Many of us use the statements, "I don't care what people think about me. I don't care what they say about me." Isn't that truly the point? How do we reach people without taking an honest look at what we look like and sound like to them? One of the best ways to do that is to get another person's honest opinion of you. You should have someone you trust to evaluate who you are and give an honest look at your character, personality and what you release into the world. If a billionaire can pay someone to come in and look at his business and tell him what it looks like, what is our problem that we can't ask someone to look at us and tell us what they see? Are we afraid of what truth they may uncover? Are we afraid we may have to actually do some work to get better? Or is it that we already think we are good and don't welcome someone else's opinion?

The perfect one, Jesus the Christ, the Son of the Living God and the one who knew no sin asked his disciples in Matthew 16:13, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" It's not that he wanted to necessarily be what they wanted. Jesus was teaching the disciples that what people think of Him and what Simon Peter had to say were very different. People perceived him as John the Baptist or just another preacher. Some even said he was a prophet like Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the others. When Jesus asked the question, "Who do you say I am?" and Simon said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God," Jesus had to respond as it was a great teaching moment. Jesus said, "Flesh and blood didn't reveal that to you." Nobody told you that. No one convinced you. You perceived this by the Holy Spirit. It's important to note what Jesus says in the 20th verse. "Then he warned his disciples not to tell anyone that He was the Christ." What? Are you trying to hide the truth? Isn't this what people should know? Why wouldn't we tell them? It just makes sense! Let's get some flyers made, create a Facebook page, start an Instagram account and just start telling everybody who you are. Jesus said no. His point was for people to get to know who he was the same way the disciples came to know; by the Holy Spirit.

My uncle used to say, "Man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still." You can preach and teach and tell people who Jesus is all day long. Until the revelation of who he is becomes real to them, none of our preaching and teaching will make any difference no matter how good, hard or convincing we make it. So does that mean we don't need to say anything? No. You let your life speak what you say you are. Jesus would ask questions of those he was doing miracles for. He would always start the process with qualifying questions. If they were not ready, he would not waste his time. To others he would say, "Your faith has made you whole."

You are not responsible for those who don't believe. You are responsible for those God has placed in your path. You can only bless those who are ready for a blessing.

There is one other thing you must recognize. Jesus didn't allow demons to speak either. Read Mark 1:22-25 and 32-34. He didn't want the demons to talk about who He was. God's spirit would reveal it. I also learn here that Jesus didn't converse with demons and evil spirits. I don't have anything to say to you. Some of us spend too much time holding a conversation with evil spirits. Doing so we establish a bond and the evil becomes connected to us. I refuse to have a conversation with depression, loneliness, sickness, poverty, disillusionment, discouragement, doubt, fear and anything else that is not bringing prosperity and good health to my life. You do know that who and what you talk with the most begins or establishes a relationship with that person or thing?

MY FRUITFUL EXPERIENCE

I really love fruits. Some of my favorite fruits are oranges, pineapples, mangos, strawberries and cantaloupes. I really enjoy kiwis and watermelon. One of my absolute favorite fruits is an apple. Apples come in a variety of ways. Some are green. I like those too. There are the Granny apples that have a little bit of sourness but just enough sweetness to balance it out. There are golden delicious apples. These have a softer outside but still deliciously sweet inside.

Yesterday, I went into the refrigerator and grabbed a beautiful red apple. It wasn’t huge. It was actually kind of small. I bit into this piece of red yummy goodness and tasted how sweet it was. It was a perfect balance of sweetness with a juicy white center on the inside and a crispy red skin on the outside. The taste was wonderful.  

Now, I know what you’re saying. “Marcus, why in the world would you waste my time to talk about fruits, trees and seeds?” Well, just to be very clear, I am really talking about you. Think of yourself as a fruit for a moment. As I share earlier, there are many, many different kinds of fruits just like there are many different kinds of people. Each person looks different and tastes different. Some people would be more like a cantaloupe (hard and scaly shell but smooth and sweet goodness on the inside). Some are like pineapples. Spiked, hard and complex on the outside and juicy, soft and sweeter than sweet on the inside. But that’s not the good part of what I wanted to share.

As I was eating that apple yesterday, I began having so many aha’s that my aha’s became aha’s. Time will not permit me to share them all. But here are the one’s that stand out to me the most. Here is the first one. I finished that small but delicious apple and I reached back in the fridge and decided that I needed another one. As I reached in and pulled out the next one, I noticed this one, had a little brown spot on it. There are times when we take a look at ourselves and realize we have some small rotten spots in us. It’s hard to deal with sometimes because if you don’t take a look, you won’t see it, but everyone else will. And there are some people in your life who have been like worms that have crawled through you and made little holes in you. You do know that an apple lasts longer when it hasn’t been pierced through the skin yet? All apples begin to rot at some point but it happens faster when the inside has been exposed. What have you been exposed to that is making or has made you rotten? What worms have you allowed to get under your skin and crawled out and have caused some rotting?

Aha number 2. I grabbed a knife and carefully cut the tiny brown spot off making sure that I cut beneath the surface so I could get the little bit of the brown away from the rest of the greatest invention ever. You are God’s greatest invention. Yes you. You might not think you matter, but God does. So he will take his knife of the word and cut away the rotten spots so it doesn’t cause the rest of your sweetness to be affected. He removes the worms so that there is no more digging through you.

Aha number three is the most powerful thought of them all, in my opinion. I began to think about the sweetness of this apple and how it originated. Apples are not a food that requires you to mix it with other ingredients. Nor do they need any seasoning or flavoring. It’s not something you have to cook or stir or even boil to create. You simply take the seeds from it and plant those seeds into the earth and water it. It will eventually grow a tree that will grow more delicious apples.

As I was enjoying the apple yesterday, I said out loud, “How did something this sweet and delicious grow from the dirt?” When we think of dirt, we think of negativity and messy stuff. That is true. Dirt can be nasty and filthy. It is not meant to be eaten. It is really not good for you to eat on it’s own. But dirt has many essential elements that are necessary to help things grow. Dirt is made up of a bunch of stuff mixed together like rocks, sand, clay and organic matter. None of which is good to eat, but the things that grow from it are.

You matter to someone. Your life can be better than what it is if you allow it to grow in good soil. The more elements that are in the soil, the more growth that will come out of it.

Mary, Mary has a song on their album called The Sound that goes like this:

“Funny thing about a garden, beauty lives within its gates
Bugs and thorns and weeds, they grow there

But they all help to create,

Vivid color variations, sweet aromas and sensations
Realize under it all, something not so beautiful
But we all ...”

“Need a little bit, need a little bit, need a little bit of dirt to grow
We need a little bit, need a little bit
Need a little rain to wash our souls
We need a little bit, need a little dirt to grow”

Remember the worms I mentioned in the beginning. You do know that worms live in the dirt, right? And they are also helping you grow. Some apples get worms in them and some don’t. It’s okay. But one thing is for sure. Everybody gets rotten sometimes. We just need our God to cut away at us sometimes so we can get those rotten places out of us. When he cuts away at us, unlike the apple, God will replace those rotten places with a fresh sweet part that fits like a missing puzzle piece.