January 21: Insight Post by Rusty Coram
Wednesday Insight Post
by Rusty Coram
Becky and I love Mike’s American Grill. They provide excellent service and consistently great food. My favorite meal is the hanger steak salad. The “hanger” cut of beef must be cooked just right, or it can be tough. At Mike’s, they marinate it in a blend of seasoning that includes soy sauce, Worcestershire, garlic, and proprietary seasonings that probably include olive oil, garlic, brown sugar, and paprika. Being immersed in the marinade infuses the steak with a unique and addictive flavor! Just as the marinade infuses the steak with flavor, meditation on God’s Word infuses our hearts and minds with truth we can draw on whenever needed. This isn’t an occasional dipping into and out of the Bible but a sustained time of being saturated in it so that it begins to adjust our perspective in a real way. For instance, in our reading this week, we see this:
“17For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! 18 So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.” 2 Corinthians 4:17-18 (NLT)
This is a powerful reminder that our time here on earth is short and that, while we will experience trouble, in the view of eternity the difficulties will be seen as relatively short and used by God for our good and for the good of others, too. Meditating on this might lead me to think about a perceived tragedy in middle school (a breakup with a girlfriend) that, as an adult, I look back on as minor and actually good for me. Meditation is where I camp out on the passage and work through practical applications in my life so that the truth guides me to trust and follow God more closely.
Like the marinade permeates the hanger steak, giving it a deep and amazing flavor, when I marinate in God’s word and incorporate its truth into my life, I take on the unique character that God wants to build in me.
Rusty Coram
Senior Pastor
New Hope Church
Lorton, Virginia
www.newhope.org