I do not claim any Southern heritage.
I spent a large majority of my childhood in Central Florida, which is geographically in the South but far from being a Southern place. Everybody there is from somewhere else.
When I was eight, we moved just south of Atlanta and I discovered for the first time that it is possible to go North to go South.
I was then bombarded with a plethora of foreign foods that I had never even heard of. The school lunch trays now had these fried balls of green grossness they called okra and hot sauce was served with every meal. I found onions and peppers in my corn bread and the only thing people drank was liquid diabetes in the form of sweet tea.
Over the years I have grown accustomed to everything I am served being deep fried and covered in salt but there is one southern food that I have never really been able to come to terms with: grits.
I am an instant oatmeal kind of guy and grits just do not do the trick. To me, they just taste like having a cold and swallowing it.
I spent most of my life avoiding this southern staple but once I was forced to try “grits and shrimp.” To my surprise, I actually kind of liked it, because it tasted more like shrimp than grits.
Then I had a revelation. Grits only taste like what you put in them. They are just flavor holders.
Cheese grits just taste like smooshy cheese. Bacon grits taste like smooshy bacon. Shrimp grits tastes like smooshy shrimp.
It has taken me my whole life to realize I am the very food I have always despised.
I am a big bowl of grits.
Everything I do in my life serves no other purpose than to hold a flavor.
Throughout our entire childhood and adolescence people are asking what we are going to do with our life. Then one day we look in the mirror and realize that the question has changed to what did we do with our lives? the whole world apparently has this perception that a good career with a retirement plan is the chief end of all man. Like anything we could ever do with our lives would ever be worth that much.
What if we saw our lives like a bowl of grits? What if we recognized that everything we do on the outside is just to hold the flavor of what is on the inside? We are flavor holders, and the presence of the Holy God who lives inside of us is the flavor.
What if we planned out our education, our careers, our relationships, and our family not as though they were end destinations, but as though they were just vehicles to carry what God has done and is doing in our lives to the world?
Christians should not be asked what they do for a living, but what are they doing because they are living.
Ministry is not a career. Ministry is letting the love that we all as Christians claim to have seep out of every pour of our being and flavoring everything we do.
That is when everything changes.
We are no longer nurses and dental hygienists, we are nurses and dental hygienists with a word from the Creator of the Universe. We are no longer construction workers and electricians, we are construction workers and electricians with a supernatural vision of humanity. We are not stay-at-home moms and corporate officials, we are stay-at-home moms and corporate officials with the fire of the Holy Spirit flowing through them.
I do not ever want to find my identity in what I get paid for. I do not want to find my identity in who I am spending my life with. I do not want to find my identity in the things I am involved in.
Every decision we make about our life should be based in our desire to see God at work through us and where we think God can use our grits better to carry His flavor.
Everything this world has to offer is just grits with nothing else added. That is just gross and even a true southerner will tell you that.
I spent a large majority of my childhood in Central Florida, which is geographically in the South but far from being a Southern place. Everybody there is from somewhere else.
When I was eight, we moved just south of Atlanta and I discovered for the first time that it is possible to go North to go South.
I was then bombarded with a plethora of foreign foods that I had never even heard of. The school lunch trays now had these fried balls of green grossness they called okra and hot sauce was served with every meal. I found onions and peppers in my corn bread and the only thing people drank was liquid diabetes in the form of sweet tea.
Over the years I have grown accustomed to everything I am served being deep fried and covered in salt but there is one southern food that I have never really been able to come to terms with: grits.
I am an instant oatmeal kind of guy and grits just do not do the trick. To me, they just taste like having a cold and swallowing it.
I spent most of my life avoiding this southern staple but once I was forced to try “grits and shrimp.” To my surprise, I actually kind of liked it, because it tasted more like shrimp than grits.
Then I had a revelation. Grits only taste like what you put in them. They are just flavor holders.
Cheese grits just taste like smooshy cheese. Bacon grits taste like smooshy bacon. Shrimp grits tastes like smooshy shrimp.
It has taken me my whole life to realize I am the very food I have always despised.
I am a big bowl of grits.
Everything I do in my life serves no other purpose than to hold a flavor.
Throughout our entire childhood and adolescence people are asking what we are going to do with our life. Then one day we look in the mirror and realize that the question has changed to what did we do with our lives? the whole world apparently has this perception that a good career with a retirement plan is the chief end of all man. Like anything we could ever do with our lives would ever be worth that much.
What if we saw our lives like a bowl of grits? What if we recognized that everything we do on the outside is just to hold the flavor of what is on the inside? We are flavor holders, and the presence of the Holy God who lives inside of us is the flavor.
What if we planned out our education, our careers, our relationships, and our family not as though they were end destinations, but as though they were just vehicles to carry what God has done and is doing in our lives to the world?
Christians should not be asked what they do for a living, but what are they doing because they are living.
Ministry is not a career. Ministry is letting the love that we all as Christians claim to have seep out of every pour of our being and flavoring everything we do.
That is when everything changes.
We are no longer nurses and dental hygienists, we are nurses and dental hygienists with a word from the Creator of the Universe. We are no longer construction workers and electricians, we are construction workers and electricians with a supernatural vision of humanity. We are not stay-at-home moms and corporate officials, we are stay-at-home moms and corporate officials with the fire of the Holy Spirit flowing through them.
I do not ever want to find my identity in what I get paid for. I do not want to find my identity in who I am spending my life with. I do not want to find my identity in the things I am involved in.
Every decision we make about our life should be based in our desire to see God at work through us and where we think God can use our grits better to carry His flavor.
Everything this world has to offer is just grits with nothing else added. That is just gross and even a true southerner will tell you that.
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