How My Tea Shows Grace

Recently I was listening to a message from Tony Evans as he spoke about how he brews his tea, and how there seem to be a couple different schools of thought when it comes to this task ...

Some really work that teabag! They like dipping it in and out of the cup, keeping it active, and eventually, even twisting up the string and squeezing out the last bit of tea from the bag ... 

Some, like him, just drop the teabag into the hot water and leave it ... letting the water and process do the work, while he waits patiently for the brewing process to complete ... 

Both transform the water ... and he compared this to simply working ourselves, or abiding in Christ ... and how like his tea, he's an abider ... letting the process transform him ... 

However it got me thinking even further ... 

As a tea drinker myself, it brought even more of a visual to me, as I am not a squeezer! In fact, those teabags are often filled with more finer grain teas (than what you would buy when you get loose tea) and by squeezing the bag to get "every last drop out" you actually end up making the tea more bitter than it should be ... 

So the more you try to do on your own, rather than just submitting to the process, the more bitter it gets ... 

Sure sounds a lot like my experience in my own faith journey!

The more I try to grab the steering wheel, the more I try to squeeze the process to make things happen quicker or in a different way, the more I try and take control rather than letting God work in me, the more bitter and frustrated I get ... 

It's no wonder there are so many commands like this in Scripture:

"Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!" Psalms 46:10

So ... perhaps each time now when I brew my next cup of tea, it will be a reminder for me to simply draw near to Jesus.

I'm not a Christian because of what I can do, I'm a Christian because of Who's I am ...

Abiding,

~Matthew