Why Such a Hurry?

Last week we celebrated Valentine’s Day and I set up a nice romantic meal for Tami and myself. We don’t go out to nice places often, so I wanted to make it special and made reservations at a favorite place where we hadn’t been for a few years. I really like the anticipation of the evening where Tami gets all dressed up and I do the best with what God has given me.

One of the fun aspects of our dates is that Tami always tries to figure out where we are going to be eating. In my sermon on Sunday I told how she will just start asking questions about where we are going and won’t stop. She knows how to read my face and knows when she chooses the right restaurant just off my expression, so this year I was determined not to let her know where we were going to eat. I simply refused to look at her while she would interrogate me about our plans. She kept saying “Look at me!” but I held my own and didn’t buckle. Finally the night of our date arrived, and I totally fooled her and took her to an unexpected place and proudly surprised her.

This leads to the point of the story. If I’m going out to a nice restaurant with my wife looking all fancy and dolled up, I don’t want to be done with dinner in 30 minutes. Normally Tami and I will sit and talk, and we tell the waiter or waitress that we will let them know when we are ready to order. We settled in and got our drinks, and we were both really hungry so we decided to order our appetizer. We’ve learned from past experience that we shouldn’t give our whole order because it will be out way too fast. Our waiter pushed to get our whole order and assured us time and time again that he would not put in the next course until we were finished with the course we were eating. Yes, I buckled and gave our whole order. Sure enough, it backfired. As soon as we ate the last of our appetizer our salads were at the table. We were halfway through our salad and a gentleman brought out our entrée and was setting it down when I explained that it’d be nice to finish my salad before my entrée was sitting on the table. He apologized and took our food back to the warmer. I’m sure they didn’t cook a new, fresh order for us.

In our lives there are areas where we have to take control. I have to take control if I’m going to have a vibrant relationship with Christ. I have to take control if my family is going to follow the path that God has for us. I have to take control if I’m going to be effective as an employee at my job. The world will try to tell me what to do and how to do it, but I need to be obedient to the voice of the Lord and His Word that teaches me how to live. When the world says “act this way,” I must make sure it lines up with God’s plan, and if it doesn’t then I send it back. You have the power to take control in your spiritual journey with Christ; will you?

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you it took our waiter 45 minutes to cash us out so we were there for almost two hours.  What a date!