Who Like's Fresh Bread?

I love fresh bread and rolls. Just think Red Lobster cheddar biscuits (my wife has a great recipe for those), yeast rolls at Ryan's, hush-puppies at T's all very good stuff. But, imagine if that bread was cooked over a fire that was fueled by feces. Not very pleasant is it! But, this is exactly what God called Ezekiel to do.

Ezekiel was a wild dude. God called him when he was a young man to be a prophet. Ezekiel was to speak the necessary, unpopular truth of God’s coming judgment to the people if they refused to repent and turn to God and stop living like the rest of the nations around them. God wanted to use Ezekiel’s life to embody the message he was called to preach. In other words, what Ezekiel said would be backed up by the life he lived, he was to talk the talk and walk the walk. This included living on bread that God first asked him to be cooked over his own feces (Read it in Chapter 4). Ezekiel rightly replied, “God come on now, that is crazy!” So, God relented and allowed him to use cow dung, what an awesome and kind God we serve. God was not just being crazy or wanting to make Ezekiel’s life hard, he wanted Ezekiel to show the people how hard life was going to be if they did not repent. You see God was at the verge of allowing Babylon to come and conquer them. Ezekiel’s oddness would stand out and people would want to know why he was different?

So, here it is for us, how far will you obedience to go. For most Christians, we are Ok, with not murdering our neighbor (although being angry at hating, many struggle with). We do Ok, with giving a little to God (but we are usually trying to give the bare minimum). We do Ok with coming to church (but living it out all week long is a different story). What I am trying to say is that obedience to God will make you appear to be different that the world! Hopefully God does call you to eat poop bread, but living out God’s word will mean you will have a radically different life that your non-Christian friends. If your life is no different that your non-Christians then maybe you should see in what areas of your life you are calling to obey God. Obedience may mean making completely different decisions than you have been making, this will not be easy, but unless you are willing to be like Ezekiel and walk the walk and talk the talk you will always lead an anemic Christian life. People will not see Christ in you and sadly neither will your children who will develop the same half hearted Christianity you practice. So if poop bread sounds nasty to you, imagine how a half-hearted Christian sounds to Jesus? Oh, but wait we don’t have to imagine he has already told us in Rev 3:16 “So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of My mouth.”

Praying God’s Gives Me Grace & Strength To Always Obey, Pastor Phillip