Spice (Matthew Corbitt)

Most people don't like distinctively spiced foods. Restaurants serve “hot and Spicy” and come up with, for the most part, a meal that is not what this central Arkansas guy would classify as hot and spicy. It seems that mild food attracts more people than something with heat.

I posed this question to Resolute, our young adult ministry, how many “moderate” people in history do you remember? How many changed their world? We couldn't think of one. “These are they which have slightly and comfortably altered our present world in a fashion that, while we may not like their teaching, it offers no real threat to our way of life.” Vs “These are they who have turned the world UPSIDEDOWN!”

Now the Bible states, let your moderation be known to all men, and I believe that. So how should we apply it? Is it talking about you beliefs towards God? Absolutely not. I know you'll agree that it's ignorant to think that Jesus would tell people that they should seek to be in the center of whatever is the prevailing thought of that day. So with this understanding what do we learn about how much spice we are suppose to use in our walk with God?

Lets look at God Himself. I think everyone can agree that Jesus was as spicy as they come, the radical's radical, the very tip of the extreme. Think about it. He debunked all religious pomp and circumstance of the day, preached about hell more than he did about heaven, He preached radical grace and forgiveness. Imagine this, The God of all things, decided to come down and die for you and I because we failed, because we messed it up, He came to save us. The cost to wash our sins was extreme, it was death by crucifixion.

Jesus was such a radical individual Himself that He produced radicals. Peter, John, Paul, Stephen, they all were so radical and extreme that they ended up giving everything for the Gospel. These crazy people would actually abstain from eating food for days at a time and spend hours upon hours in prayer. They would walk around Asia minor and Europe carrying the message that they had been sent with, sleeping outside, being beaten and thrown in jail. These were not moderate believers (if there is such a thing as a moderate believer, ie. lukewarm).

When considering the soul, and where you are planning on spending eternity, we ought to get the recipe from the Masters cookbook, but be warned, like it or not, it both pleads for and demands spice, a radical life altering change that can only be found in Jesus Christ.