Lessons from a Tea Bag

It's recently come to my attention that I'm really good at starting books, but never seem to finish them. I'm currently reading 3 books, my bible, and 4 textbooks!

One of the books I have started in "Changed Into His Image" by Jom Berg. Here is an excerpt of my favorite parts of the book so far :)

Lessons from a Tea Bag

We can illustrate this biblical truth this way. When we take a tea bag, place it in a teacup, and fill the cup with hot water, the water activates the tea in the bag, unleashing its taste into the water around it. The hot water didn’t create the taste; it merely revealed, or drew out, what was already in the bag. This depicts what happens in the human heart. The pressures around us (the unfavorable circumstances, the temptations, and the commands of God to love Him and our neighbor) merely draw out of our heart what is already in it. We cannot blame the hot water for the taste in the cup. The contents of the tea bag determine the flavor of the tea. If we don’t like that particular taste, we need to put into the water a bag containing a different kind of tea.

Similarly, we cannot shift the blame for any bitterness, anger, despair, deception, cruelty, and so forth that we display when we are under pressure. The pressures merely expose how unlike Christ we really are. Acts 16:22–24 tells us of a “hot water” experience Silas and the apostle Paul had while in Philippi. Because of their preaching, “the multitude rose up together against them: and the magistrates rent off [Paul’s and Silas’s] clothes, and commanded to beat them. And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the jailor to keep them safely: Who, having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks.” The “hot water” of suffering revealed the nature of the hearts of these two men. We see their response in the next verse: “And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them.” While other believers might react to such mistreatment with bitterness and anger or with despair and discouragement, Paul and Silas responded with praise and thanksgiving. Why the difference? The hearts of these men had been changed to be like the heart of Christ, who responded in a similar fashion to His suffering.