Salad Dressing

Today’s Pause devotional is about Salad Dressing. Seriously.

That’s what I said, salad dressing.

Okay, I understand this is about as simple as you can get. Everybody knows when you pick up the bottle of salad dressing, and the oil has risen to the top, you’ve gotta shake it before you pour it. Otherwise, you aren’t going to get any of the good spices that are resting in the bottom of the bottle; that’s where all the flavor is. It’s okay but if you just pick up that bottle and pour it, all you’ll get is a bland, wet salad. To get the flavor, you’ve gotta stir it up, right?

It’s the same in our walk with Jesus. We’re told in 2 Timothy 1:6 (MEV) to, “Stir up the gift of God which is in you…” In verse 7, Paul goes on to tell us both what those gifts are and what they are not. “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”

We don’t have to live our lives in fear of anything because He has given us a spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind. “Sound mind” can be translated safe thinking, good judgment and disciplined thought patterns.

How many times in the last year or so have you, or someone you know, suffered because you were walking in fear, struggling with your thought patterns, feeling foggy in your ability to make right decisions? And honestly feeling like, “Where did all the love go?” There is so much hatred all around us! It’s been that kind of a year.

I submit to you, perhaps we’ve been sitting still like a bottle of salad dressing. We’re trying to live and make decisions based on what we see on the surface. At surface level, in the world we’re living in, it’s easy for a spirit of fear to influence the decisions we make. But that’s not God’s plan for us. Instead, He has given us a spirit of power, of love and of a sound mind.

Paul says to Timothy and to us, “Stir it up!” You have the power needed to confront the spirit of fear; you have the ability to bring love to unloving situations; and you have discernment, good judgment and the ability to have disciplined thought patterns that will produce health in your life. Stir it up!

So join me in asking the Lord to show us what He has already put within us that can be applied to our lives. Let’s let everything that pours out of us today be flavored with the gifts God has already put within us. Stir it up! {eoa}

Pastor Carmen Quevedo oversees discipleship teams, including children, youth and adults. Her call is to be a “facilitator of ministry”—seeking to equip and release others to serve God with all of their hearts. She and her husband, Rick, returned to The Church on The Way in Van Nuys, California in 2014, where Carmen is on the executive pastoral team. They have two children, Aaron and Christina.

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