A while back I\u00a0was enjoying a cup of coffee as I prayed in my prayer room. I usually share this room and my morning prayer time with one of my cats (see yesterday\u2019s blog) who is on a special diet. Although he\u2019s a twenty-pounder, he\u2019s the\u00a0youngest, and my smaller male pulls rank while he\u2019s eating and barges right in, gobbling down that enticingly forbidden prescription food. To avoid that, my prayer room doubles as a private feline cafe.<\/p>\n
As I was finishing my time with the Lord, I drained the last gulp or two from my coffee mug. Something with the texture of a crumbled dunked cookie flowed into my mouth with the last slurp. That\u2019s odd<\/em>, I thought; I didn’t dunk anything<\/em>.<\/p>\n I\u00a0spit out the remaining liquid and crumbly stuff into a napkin over the sink. And there, right before my eyes, were small chunks of cat food. Yuck!<\/em> And\u00a0contrary to the label,\u00a0it did not\u00a0taste like chicken.<\/p>\n As I spit and rinsed, spit and rinsed, and spit and rinsed again, I wondered how it happened to find its way into my coffee.\u00a0Earlier in the\u00a0morning, I had dished out the chow for my cats while simultaneously\u00a0making my\u00a0coffee. Evidently, something went\u00a0terribly wrong in the preparation.<\/p>\n And two thoughts came to me.<\/p>\n 1. \u00a0In our own lives as we go about our daily routines, things can get misdirected, lines might get crossed by accident, and we end up with less than pure intake. In fact, at times we eat \u201ccat food\u201d in life without even knowing it. Things may not seem quite right with what you\u2019re hearing; the input from others may seem funny to the taste, but on you roll\u00a0at the speed of light without giving it a second thought.<\/p>\n This is why it\u2019s so important for you, in your busy life, to test your intake\u00a0with the Spirit of God and His Word. If something doesn\u2019t \u201ctaste\u201d, “smell”\u00a0or “feel” right to you, lift up a quick prayer and ask God to sort it out for you. Then later, if the Lord hasn\u2019t brought clarity to you yet, spend some more time in prayer and look into the Word to find out what God says about it.<\/p>\n A man of God I highly respect used to say that when we listen\u00a0to sermons or read Christian literature, we are to\u00a0\u201chave as much sense as an old cow; eat the hay and spit out the stubble.\u201d I would add, this pertains to everyday life as well.<\/p>\n There’s a lot of cat food out there and there’s a lot of stubble.\u00a0That’s why you need to be spiritually alert. Know what you’re hearing; know what you’re receiving as “the way it is”.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 You will<\/em> survive with cat food in your stomach; you will survive some stubble. You’re just not going to receive the\u00a0pure nutrients of the Word of God by consuming these things, and therefore, you’re not going\u00a0to be nearly as strong as you could be in your walk with God.<\/p>\n If you go to church and find that you’ve been fed some stubble with your hay, just spit it out; don’t blast the messenger as a false teacher.\u00a0Does\u00a0Flossie the\u00a0cow start an email campaign alerting the other cattle that Farmer Smith is a false farmer because she found some stubble in her hay last week? No, she eats her hay and spits out the stubble.<\/p>\n There’s a difference between stubble and poison. There’s a difference between cat food that is accidentally dropped into a cup of coffee and the intentional twisting of doctrine. You’re not only responsible to train your senses to discern between true food and stubble or cat food; but also<\/em> you need to train your senses to discern between stubble and poison, cat food and toxins. The differences may\u00a0seem subtle to you, but to God the differences are huge\u2014as different as\u00a0human\u00a0misunderstanding\u00a0versus\u00a0the purposeful twisting of truth.<\/p>\n You are accountable every day you mature in Christ to develop discernment and to walk in it. When you are presented with stubble in your hay\u2014or cat food in your coffee\u2014spit it out! However, if you are fed\u00a0a constant diet of\u00a0stubble or cat food, you may want to find another place to dine.<\/p>\n On the other hand, don’t make the mistake of labeling those who have served some stubble or cat food in their messages as false prophets or teachers, or as those who preach “another Jesus”.\u00a0Maybe they\u00a0just had a bad\u00a0week or a rough year.\u00a0If you spend some time praying for them in love, you\u00a0just might be blessed to learn how powerfully on-target they can preach.<\/p>\n It is my\u00a0conviction that, as Christians, we need to refrain from labeling ministers and other\u00a0believers in a knee-jerk reaction. Yes, we are to discern what we hear, but not everything that contains some stubble or bits of cat food is heresy<\/em>; and not everyone out there who is labeled<\/em> as false is, indeed<\/em>, false.<\/p>\n And if\u00a0you drop\u00a0by my house for coffee, I’ll do my best to give you the straight stuff, cat food-free.<\/p>\n Dorothy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A while back I\u00a0was enjoying a cup of coffee as I prayed in my prayer room. I usually share this room and my morning prayer time with one of my cats (see yesterday\u2019s blog) who is on a special diet. Although he\u2019s a twenty-pounder, he\u2019s the\u00a0youngest, and my smaller male pulls rank while he\u2019s eating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-walk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5177"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5233,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5177\/revisions\/5233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}