Recently I was on a road trip that took us “north.” I know there is a lot of debate on where the south ends and the north begins, but here is how my family and I clearly know we have exited the south: when you stop at a restaurant and you can not find sweet tea. Every time we stop, our kids check to see if there is sweet tea or not – if yes we are still in the south, if not, we have entered the north. Sweet tea is one of God’s great gifts to people. I believe it proves that He loves us. Sweet tea is made to bring joy to people, that is its purpose. When you have something good like sweet tea, don’t mess with it.
What are you good at? What do you enjoy doing? What do you do that when you are doing it, there is this feeling inside you that you were made for it. It could be encouraging the people around you at work or school, it could be making people laugh, it could be doing random act of serving people, what I can guarantee whatever it is, that thing was specifically hard wired in you – you were made for it!
On our recent road trip we pulled into a restaurant and our kids checked out the drink selection and they came and grabbed me and pointed to this:
I had to look at it a couple of times to try and understand the obvious confusion and intentional sin that had just taken place. In the pursuit of health and options, someone had tried to take a good gift from God and mess with it and what was produced was a travesty to the original purpose of sweet tea. (BTW, we tried it and it was terrible).
Our world is filled with Diet Sweet Tea people. People who know that they matter, but have tried to fit into someone else’s perception or approval and are living a life less than their potential., less than what they were made for. Maybe you have an area of your life that used to be alive in you and over time it has felt like it has slowly died – maybe at the hands of someone telling you to grow up, to be more mature, that life should be nice and safe. I want to encourage you to remember that you were made for more! More life, more joy, more freedom. Let God and God alone tell you who you were made for.
Go for it.
Don’t become Diet Sweet Tea.
Live 2 Timothy 1:7 out boldly and be ready to live in the power of being made for more.