Let me just suck on the coffee grounds. . . .

When I was pregnant for my youngest daughter the Lord laid on my heart to stop drinking caffeinated coffee. That decaf was okay, but not caffeinated. So I laid down my coffee. But I love coffee! I love flavored coffee, I love mocha, espresso, I confess I could even eat the chocolate covered coffee beans. I didn’t think I over indulged, but it’s what God wanted. It was a bit of a struggle, but I had to trust God that when he asked me to do something. It was for my own good. I’m not going to say that drinking caffeine is a sin, it was what God laid on my heart for me. There are many things God will show you and warn you about your health later down the line if you’ll just listen to him. I did have an attack in my health a few months after to this and caffeine is one of the many things that can be linked to some symptoms I’d faced. (My youngest can be a bit hyper and I’ve often joked laying down coffee will help stabilizing her!) So I drink my decaf, miss my Pepsi, and only once in awhile do I really miss it.
I woke up to go to church yesterday, and I thought “I really want real coffee!” I mean not just a little bit, I craved it. Saying that there are times that the Lord asking this of me hasn’t been a struggle would be lying.

It’s all too often when God asks us to lay something down we fight him? Come on, I’ve done it on various things. We all have. We justify well what if I go to half caff? Or maybe I’ll have a Pepsi once in awhile? But what has God said? I am not saying this to get religious or ritualistic, but be real people.

God doesn’t want us to have any gods before him? Gee wasn’t that the first commandment. But yet we put things before him all the time? I certainly didn’t think I ever did that with coffee but if I don’t lay something down that God told me to, then that’s what I’m doing. There was an intern many years ago at the Lutheran church I grew up in that once taught a sermon entitled “Hail to the lawn gods!” That sermon has always stayed with me. The point was many don’t come to church on Sunday morning because it’s the perfect time to do lawn work, and really their putting their lawn over God. That phrase has become a joke between my mom and I over the years. What are you hailing today? Are you preferring TV, or the internet over God? What gods have you created in your life?

The answer is no, you can’t just “suck on the coffee grounds”. You can’t stay where God told you to leave and expect God to bless you. You can’t keep continuing to do what God
has asked you to stop and continue to experience Him like you want. You must move forward. You must do away with the gods in your life and cling to the one and only true God.

One day when I go home to be with the Lord, I do not want “She really liked coffee” on my tombstone. I want “She did her best to serve the Lord.”

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