Buffet Line or Chef’s Choice?
We’ve all been to an “all you can eat” buffet in our lives, and for many of us, it’s our favorite type of restaurant. We pick a plate and inch down the line, weaving in between the tables laden with tasty dishes, indulging our preferences in whatever amount is enticing in the moment. It gives us control over our food intake, fulfills a delicious desire, and leaves us satisfied at the end of the meal. We can go back for as many plates we want, spend extra time at the dessert table, and pack in the grub all for an easy, flat fee. We think we know what we want, piling our plates high with our choices, but we often pay the price of a stomachache afterwards. “I shouldn’t have eaten all that…I’m never doing that again,” we groan as we lay on the couch later that evening.
On the other end of the restaurant spectrum, there’s the option of a “chef’s choice” printed in fancy font on the menu. This is typically a delicacy prepared exactly to the preferences and palate of a professional chef. He is confident that the amount of food on the plate is not too much, not too little, but just enough, and will tickle the taste buds in delight. Ordering the chef’s choice meal requires an amount of personal surrender, a level of trust in the chef’s preparations and decisions, and eager anticipation of the meal to be served. Contrary to the common negative side-effect of a buffet-style meal, complaints about a chef’s choice dish are rare. If anything, the dish is praised for its delicious flavor, lovely presentation, and the way it settles with the stomach. The master chef knows best. He knows cooking techniques, flavor matching, stylistic plating, and how to please his customers. The ingredients and methods might surprise us, but the master chef knows how to combine elements to create a masterpiece.
So it is with Jesus. Our Savior is like a master chef, perfectly concocting what He knows is best for us, using both dear and disliked pieces of our story to make something extravagant. To let the Lord work and reign in our lives, we must fully surrender every single aspect and hold everything open-handed for Him to use as He sees fit. As Pastor Ben said on Sunday, we can’t have a full-time Savior and a part-time Lord. That is the manipulative human way, yet not the transformative approach we should take when we submit our lives to Christ. We can’t have control and surrender at the same time. They are oppositional, like oil and water scattering from one another in a bowl. Control produces a false sense of power, toxic pride, and self importance. Surrender produces tender trust, potent humility, and lavish love.
If Jesus has need of something dear to our heart, will we surrender and give it to Him or will we clutch it even closer, believing that we know what is best for our lives? Will we choose the "lesser path" of the buffet line where we make the decisions or trust the chef to prepare something that surpasses our imaginations? Through surrender to Him, our lives are saved and perfected in His holiness, and we will find freedom, joy and hope, not frustration, loss and sorrow. All praise be to King Jesus for His tender mercy and lovingkindness to save and shape us!
“And being made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.” ~ Hebrews 5:9
~ Abi Gordon serves as Social Media Coordinator at LIFE Fellowship. She enjoys watercolors, photography reading, writing and spending time outdoors and is a native of Colorado.