"Taste and see" - Where Change Starts

Where does change start? When you've lived in a neighborhood plagued by gun violence, visible addiction, poverty and have read the history of american policy in a city like Chicago you spend a lot of time thinking about what it takes to change things. In Proverbs we're told where it begins. "The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding." The beginning of almost everything we have starts with a desire to get it, no matter the cost or despite the cost. I met a guy while in college who had been a pimp. He was the subject of my first mini-doc. He told me that the way he got girls to work for him was to give them drugs for free. Once they had a taste for it, once the desire for it kicked in, they were willing to prostitute themselves for it. The beginning of drug addiction was this: get addicted, though it cost you everything...

Every Friday and Sunday we go out where the drug dealing takes place and where the streets give people a taste of all that the streets have to offer. In that place we worship, we pray, we teach from God's word, and we enjoy being the church and being in fellowship with the Holy Spirit. We taste and see that the Lord is good and the neighborhood sees us doing it. In that place we are declaring that there is something else that a person can get a taste for. But just because we're declaring it, doesn't mean they are going to value it. Remember, they have a taste for something else, and that taste has become a desire and that desire is driving them, even blinding them, to the blessing that is right before them. Our presence, night after night, Sunday after Sunday, says something about the value of Jesus. Our time, our energy, our gathering says there is something here that is valuable. There is something here that is better.

One morning during prayer I was led to Ezekiel 2:8- 9. “But you, son of man, hear what I say to you. Be not rebellious like that rebellious house; open your mouth and eat what I give you. And when I looked, behold, a hand was stretched out to me, and behold, a scroll of a book was in it." Later, in chapter 3:2-3 Ezekiel eats that scroll. "So I opened my mouth, and he gave me this scroll to eat. And he said to me, 'Son of man, feed your belly with this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it.' Then I ate it, and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey."

Ezekiel tasted God's word and it was sweet to him, but God understood that this wouldn't be the way the people who God sent Ezekiel to preach to, would experience it. "But the house of Israel will not be willing to listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me: because all the house of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart." Most Sundays and most night church Fridays when we preach and when we worship, more people walk by than stop to get a taste. They are distracted or preoccupied by other desires. The crowds do not come. This scripture reminds us that this doesn't mean that what we're feeding the people is of poor quality or that we have bad taste. It is the rebellious who have perverted appetites. It is the sick who cannot taste correctly. There is no shame in being hungry and thirsty for righteousness even if you eat alone. This summer, ten guys off the block worked with us to create an event they called the Great Giveaway. It was an event meant to be fun for parents and their children. There was cotton candy, popcorn, bouncy houses, Olaf, Paw Patrol, and about $3,000 worth of toys and bikes. It was the largest crowd we've had all summer. It was smaller than the crowd for Night Church, and Sunday morning church and Sunday night bible study, but it was larger than the crowd that's usually out for drugs, drinking and revelry. The Great Giveaway gave the neighborhood a taste for what fun could look like when it stayed in permissive boundaries. It was a taste in the right direction and the guys who organized it experienced the fun of planning, executing and seeing the fruits of their labor to create something positive.

All change starts with desire. Desire starts with a taste. You cannot create change if you don't have something different for people to taste. And people can't get a taste of something that isn't consistently set before them. I love the way the NIV puts it . "But the people of Israel are not willing to listen to you because they are not willing to listen to me, for all the Israelites are hardened and obstinate. But I will make you as unyielding and hardened as they are. I will make your forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint. Do not be afraid of them or terrified by them." God has made up our minds. God is good. We get Him. And we will continually get Him where others don't. Until one day, they get Him too.