SBARRO

- A couple of thoughts before I get started tonight. First off, I want to say Congratulations to one of my true friends and teammate Chris Pitts and his Girlfriend A Ray on there 1 year!! It's good to have a couple that lives for Christ and loves each other because of who they are, or better yet who they serve. Second, is that I am absolutely Jacked up about to tomorrow. God is going to be speaking at NewSpring tomorrow and a ton of people are going to meet Him for the first time. Thirdly I watched Rush Hour 3 tonight, and It was great!! Lastly I want to share with you something that has bothered me since yesterday. SBARRO, for those of you who don't know what it is, is a Pizza place (Italian, whatever) that doesn't serve whats on there menu!! No Lie, I was in the mall Friday and want there to eat in the food court. I ordered a Calzone at first, when the lady told me that they didn't have any. I then ordered the Stuffed Pizza, and again she said we don't have that. So, in the slightest bit of frustration I asked, "Well what do you Have?" I finally settled down and began to laugh about it, but had to throw in one more punch right before I payed with me Credit Card. I said laughingly " Do you accept Visa, since your sign says that you Do?" HAHA Man that was a great, I thought "I have never been to a Place where you look at the menu to see what you can't order!" If you know me, I try to take every experience and turn it into a learning one. I began to think, if that Menu tells me the things I Cant have, that sure leaves a lot of choices to choose from. I here people say all the time, the Bible is no fun. All it does, is tell us of the things we cant do, or aren't supposed to do. The way I see it, it must be easier to tell the things we cant do, rather than all the things we can. If the Bible is a Menu that tells us all the things we can't have, then that leaves us allot of choices to choose from. Like John 10:10 "The thief cometh not, but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy: I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." That sure leaves allot to choose from, LIFE ABUNDANTLY is a pretty broad statement. The only one who puts boundaries on the abundance of our life, are the ones who choose from the list of things you cant have. When I was ordering at SBARRO, I was choosing from the list which significantly shrank the abundance of things I had to choose from had I not used the List/Menu. Take a look at Adam and Eve, God gave them all they could ask for, except one thing. One little tree that God told them not to eat of. That's it, they had every thing vs. the one thing and they chose to pick the one, so there abundance significantly shrank in size. For some reason, we are so drawn toward the stuff that we can not have. It's not like the banned substances are better than that of what is allowed for us to have. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, was no special tree. It wasn't any better than the other trees that were in the Garden. It wasn't the tree that made them have the knowledge of good and evil, but the fact that they ate of the tree gave them the knowledge. God simply picked out a tree and said don't eat it, but if you do, it will be a sin against me and you will surly die. God could have said don't walk on that patch of grass over there in the corner of the Garden. That is the grass of knowledge of good and evil. It was simply a test God had designed for Adam and Eve, nothing more. Out of all the things that are in the book of Genesis, it's a shame that THE TREE is what's most remembered. It isn't alto, just one thing on the menu in which we can not have. We should thank God for the giving us the MENU, and leaving the restrictions in which we put on our life's abundance up to us. I pray, that the next time we read the word of God, we don't read it as a strict manual of things not to do but rather a Menu that isn't big enough to show all the things which we can do.