Green Beans and Ketchup

When my son was younger, he would not eat green beans. And still to this day, he does not eat them. But at the beginning we salted and peppered them.....nothing. He would eat everything but the green beans. We tried everything to get him to eat them. I tried to shove it in his mouth – JK!! We tried to pretend the beans were an airplane, truck, anything to get him to eat it. Nothing was working. I thought to myself I can outsmart my son, how hard can it be? He likes ketchup!! I put some ketchup on those beans. Success! He ate one bean, two, then three…..I had a great idea!! Then he started to figure it out. Instead of eating the beans he sucked the ketchup off and spit the bean out. Failure. All I did was create a way for him to eat ketchup instead of the green beans. Which ketchup is good and all, but not as nutritious as green beans.

I say all this to tell all of you to put ketchup on your beans and maybe it will taste better.

No really, I say this because this is what we do to our faith. We need a relationship with God. We need spiritual nourishment to keep us healthy. Having a true relationship with God is our nourishment. Proverbs 3:5, 8 says “Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding……..this will bring health to your body, and nourishment to your bones.” Our own understanding tells us to put ketchup on our faith, instead of just eating the green beans. Instead of having a true relationship with God, we like to cover it with ketchup. We like to do things that are (what we think to be) beneficial for us. It is not nourishing to put ketchup on green beans. It does nothing but add taste. We feed our taste buds and think it is something true. But we are only fooling ourselves. Jesus sees right through the ketchup. When He was sitting with His disciples at the Last Supper and tells them that He is going to be betrayed. All the apostles including Judas Iscariot say “Surely not I, Lord?” Jesus saw right through the ketchup of Judas. Jesus saw right through the faith of Judas and tells him that “It is you.” We mix things (popularity, entertainment, school, etc) with our faith and all it does is leads us away from having real nourishment. You see Judas let his greed for life and money cover his faith. It led him to betraying Jesus and his death. When we mix things with or cover up our faith it leads us eventually to betray Jesus.

Eat the green beans. Seek a true relationship with God. And don’t put ketchup on it no matter how good it tastes!

Live it,
Beau