Not Much to Work With

Shortly after getting out of college I had a job working for a house painter.  One job that we were working on was painting the trim on this run down house in a bad part of Pontiac.  The house was in disrepair as were most of the houses on the street.  The yard was rough looking and there was trash in the street and we were there to paint the trim.  And we did.  We scraped and painted and cleaned up and when we were done, it was a run down house in a rough part of Pontiac, with nice looking trim.  I'm telling this story, because sometimes it's hard to do much, when you don't have much to work with.

But then I think of the TV show "Chopped".  It's on the Food network.  There are four chefs who are given a basket of ingredients from which they have to make a dish.  In one round it's an appetizer, the second round it's a main course then the final round is desert.  After each round, the chef making the worst dish is "chopped" and is out of the competition.  

One thing that makes it interesting are the ingredients that they are given.  Sometimes its exotic things like goat meat or produce that you have never heard of.  But I think it's entertaining when they are given very common foods that they need to make special.  So they are given a can of Spam, or maybe some sardines, or marshmallow peeps or ramen noodles.  Now make a gourmet meal from THAT.  

I think that the big difference between the chefs on Chopped and Painting a run down house, is what you can bring into the mix.  You see, the painter was putting a fresh coat on the old surface.  The chefs have an entire stocked kitchen to add ingredients to.  So if the peeps are melted and some fresh raspberries are added, then braised with chocolate sauce drizzled over the top???? Maybe they are good.  Or if the spam is sauteed with shallots and fresh morels with crushed plantains and an Orange Crush reduction??? Who Knows.  (Disclaimer - I have no idea what a "reduction" is.  They just use that term a lot on the show.)  

So walking with God is like working in the chopped kitchen and going it alone is like painting the trim on a falling down house.

When we try to do under our own power, we end up catching the highlights.  Maybe we improve the curb appeal a little bit.  But in the end we haven't made a major improvement we've only addressed the surface.

When we take our journey with God, there is more than an improvement, there is a total transformation.  God turns us into much more than we can ever be on our own.  God does this by adding His secret ingredient, the Holy Spirit.  When the Holy Spirit is allowed to simmer in our soul, we are transformed from the meager to the exceptional.  

Watch this clip from Pastor Chris.

God turns the ordinary into the extraordinary when His people follow the Holy Spirit.  The Bible is not a story of great people doing great things.  It is the story of flawed people being more than anyone thought possible when they walked with God.  

And the same story is available for us all.