Drop your fruit!

This morning at church, our Pastor reminded me of a story that my dad told me long ago.  You see, my dad lived in Guana, Africa for 5 years of the younger years of his life.  He used to always tell us about the stories he remembers...and I LOVED to hear them!  I still do to this day! 

I know for me as a teenager, as soon as something "felt good to me", like I was being accepted, or someone was willing to be my friend, I automatically and immediately clung to them because that's what felt right.  I knew I NEEDED to cling to something, and for that time, it felt like that's what I needed!  So I held on as tight as I could to the warmth of the acceptance and I embraced the comfort of a falsified love that would never go beyond the surface!

The story I was reminded of this morning was the story of the monkey.  If you watch monkeys and are ever interested in catching a wild monkey, it is very easy.  ( I know you're all thinking you may catch one in your local backyard.... lol) All you have to do is put a small piece of fruit in a jar with an opening only big enough for the monkey to get it's flat hand in and out of and chain it tightly to a grounded tree.  Once it grabs hold of the fruit, it's hand can no longer fit through the opening.  The monkey now has a fist full of fruit that it can not get out of the jar.  That monkey will sit there holding that fruit and possibly sacrifice it's entire being just because it is not willing to let go of the fruit.  All it would have to do is drop what's in its hand, and it would be free.  but the monkey WILL NOT drop the fruit in order to save its own life! 

This is SO true of all of us- me especially at a younger age!  I was clinging and grasping and holding onto anything and everything that seemed to be so satisfying- so rewarding- so fresh and sweet- but it was a trap!  It was costing me my entire life of JOY and knowledge because I wasn't willing to let it go.  All I had to do was GIVE UP.  If I would have opened my hands, my heart, and my life and let the "satisfying wants of this world" go that I whole-heartedly thought I "needed", it would be then that I would be freed!  Freed from all the guilt, the shame, the pain, and the hurt. My self- image was in that jar and I wasn't letting go! 

Years later I dropped the fruit and ran!  I ran to my freedom and it was the Cross! I didn't have to cling to anything when I got there either, there was someone there clinging to me- and His name was Jesus!  He took me just as I was!  He took the things out of my hands that I had been clinging onto and filled my heart with His own Spirit and Joy and Contentment! What I didn't realize was what Pastor Les explained this morning-

"When we cling to the things of this world- we are chained to this world!" Whether those things we cling to are money, fame, acceptance, popularity, sexual desires, drugs, pornography, homosexuality, unforgiveness, greed, bitterness, lust, anything- they all chain us to this world because we are clinging to them in this jar we call life that is chained to the world! The amazing thing is that we all have the choice to let go- but will we let go of what we think we "want" to have that which we truly "need"?