Taste and See

In the devotional I did this morning the reference is Luke 8:26-39. It's the story of Jesus casting out of a man a legion of demons, and sending them into a herd of pigs that then plunged to their death. As the people in the nearby town heard what Jesus had done verse 37 states "...the people of the region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them, because they were overcome with fear." I don't know about you but whenever I read that verse I wonder why they were afraid. Why would they ask the Son of God to leave when they had just seen a work of his healing and freeing power in one of their own? My journey with God this week shows I've been a bit of a hypocrite toward the Gerasenes people. This week God has challenged me in regard to something in my "possession" (and I use that word loosely...especially after this week). It's something that's perfectly fine, not evil or intended for evil. Yet as I saw Jesus approaching this thing of mine from a distance I all of a sudden found myself overcome with fear. Like the Gerasenes people I wanted to ask Him to leave. Thankfully He didn't, but it took me a day or 2 to open my hands and stop grasping what was in my possession so Jesus could take a look and see how I was handling it. Through spending much time in His presence God showed me many things about what I was holding, bringing healing and freedom through truth. The whole process made me take a good hard look at how I view God, His love for me and His goodness. This morning after I read the previous mentioned passage I decided to do a word study on "good", in the context of God being good. I came across Psalm 34:8 which says "Taste and see that the Lord is good...". This lead to some thoughts. First off, this concept of tasting indicates an active experience of Him. If I want to know a food is good to me I'm not going to base that only on the presentation of the food or someone elses response to it. I can't tell it's good just by standing at a distance and observing. Instead, I'm going to take a risk, taste it, and experience it for myself. The same with Jesus. I can stand at a distance and see what He's doing for others and say it's good, but I can't know that about Jesus in my own life until I engage myself in experiencing Him. Just as with food, there's a risk. With food I don't know what taste is going to hit my tongue, and with Jesus I don't know what experiences I'll get on my way to seeing that He is indeed good. So I'm now holding much more loosely this thing in my life that I've allowed God to get fully involved in. I'm choosing to let Him be totally in the middle of it and to do with it what He will. I'm still not sure what experiences are going to come to me as I continue to surrender it to Him but I do know that in the end I will taste and see that He is good.