Left to soak

Romans 2:4 "Don't you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can't you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin?"

In our house we have a few consistent meals that we will cook on a regular basis. One of those that is a favourite with everyone in the family is Chicken Breast cooked with Sage & Onion Stuffing. Without turning this into a recipe blog you cook fillets of chicken breast covered over by a thick layer of stuffing in the oven for about 2hrs until everything is cooked and the stuffing forms a nice crisp surface with a soft texture underneath. While this tastes wonderful the major draw back is cleaning the dish this was cooked in afterwards. Due to the way it's cooked you get a rim of stuffing almost welded to the dish afterwards.

You have two choices. You either scrub away at this for about an hour afterwards, wasting all your effort, scoring (and probably ruining) the dish and deciding never to cook this again, or fill up the dish with warm soapy water and leave overnight to soak. In the morning the dry burnt on stuffing is saturated with the water it simply falls off and can be thrown away and cleaned with ease.

I have seen people who are exploring Jesus start to come to church. They come under the sound of the gospel. They become part of the social life of the church. They form friendships with people in the church. Maybe they join a home group or start to socialize with people in the church. In fact they are watching, listening, waiting to be convinced. If you dearly love this person its a frustrating wait. You look for minor sign of change, or a "damascus road moment".

In fact, God has them in soak. He's just working on them in His own way and His own time. His kindness leads them to repentance. Be patient. He doesn't want to attach them with the spiritual scrubbing brush and ruin the wonderful person he placed inside of them to be. He wants to prepare them. Lavish his love and get them to the point where a mild soaking causes the pain and ugliness to melt away under His grace.

On YouVersion