The charger in the sun..

Wow.. so I fell asleep on the couch last night (as if this is a rare occasion) with my thigh right on top of my laptop charger. I woke up to a slightly irritating burn on my leg. I started laughing at myself because all of a sudden my eyes were opened to a simple parable in the bible...

A few years ago while I was in varsity, a close friend of mine Mukona told me something that is only making sense now. Mukona has a beautiful mind; he saw me making a fuss about a charger that was in the sun and how I wanted to take that charger out of direct sunlight. He said to me that the heat from the direct sun was insignificant compared to the heat inside the charger itself. Simplified, the heat coming in had nothing on the heat going out.

This saying by my friend made me realise that it is not what goes on around us like who our friends are, what we drink or eat, or even smoke, that that defiles us; but what is going on inside of us...

Consider what is said in Matthew 15:11‭, ‬17‭-‬20 NKJV "Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.” Do you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated?  But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man.  For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.  These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.”

I think it would do us a great deal of good to check the status of our hearts and what our hearts are made of. I think we need to focus less on looking good on the outside, and focus more on producing good fruit from our hearts, loving our neighbour as ourselves and loving God with all of our hearts, minds and souls.

Starting today, I choose to look good before God and not people.. next time you take a look at you charger, think of my friend's saying.

My Peace I give you, Shalom