Have you ever tried something for the very first time and wondered how the heck you’ve lived this long without trying it? Me too.
Like when “Starbucks” started serving cold brew, and you realized after the first sip that your coffee of choice was forever changed. Or when you got to college, met your best friend, and can’t remember what you ever did with your time before you met them. Or maybe when you tasted pretzel “M&Ms” for the first time and couldn’t figure out why it had taken so long for something so wonderful to come into existence.
I think sometimes our relationship with the Lord is like that too.
We go through seasons. I don’t mean winter, spring, summer, and fall seasons. I mean seasons of feeling near to the Lord, seasons of feeling far from Him, seasons of feeling energized and joyful, and then seasons of feeling lonely and confused.
During the hard seasons of my life, it seems so easy to cry out to the Lord because His presence is essential for me to get through the day. I know, during these valleys, that without my cold brew in the morning and my time with Jesus, I will crash and burn.
The good seasons, the hills, are a whole different story.
School is good. My friends rock. Life is just fun. And I somehow get distracted by all that goodness. Instead of being pushed closer to the Lord out of gratefulness for all the joy in my life, I feel like I can just enjoy it without spending that much time with Him.
It’s during these seasons that I settle for peanut “M&Ms.” They’re alright, but they're nothing compared to the pretzel ones.
I know you feel me on this one, peanut “M&Ms” are really nothing special.
It’s only when we stop in the midst of these seasons and realize that we are just as needy and broken on the hills as we are in the valleys that we start to seek the presence of the Lord again. Man, it is sweet. We invite God into the goodness He has already given us. We praise Him for who He is, not what He can do for us. And we realize just how much we’ve been missing Him all this time.
It’s the same when you meet Jesus for the first time, too.
Like you’ve had this best friend all along and you just didn’t realize it. You get in the Lord’s presence, and all of a sudden, everything is different. It’s right. It makes sense. You didn’t even know you had a hole inside of you until you felt what it was like for that hole to be filled.
And let me tell you, once you taste pretzel “M&Ms,” you’ll never go back to peanut.
And WAY more importantly, once you invite Jesus in on every part of your life, not just the hard ones, you’ll never want to go back to being without Him either.