Pancakes and the Holy Spirit
Once a week my husband and I go out to breakfast. Our favorite restaurant at this stage in life is IHop. It has good senior prices, and they now have a reward program! We can certainly afford to spend more, but why, when we can play a game of how much we can get for the least amount of money.
We play the game so well, that we figured out if my husband just orders three eggs and I order one senior breakfast, we can make two meals out of it. He gets his eggs and bacon and I get my eggs and hash browns, and we share the toast. Each drinking hot water with lemon and the total breakfast for two comes to $15.20…and we get three Pan Coin rewards!
This particular day was the day to trade in my 30 Pan Coins for a free veggie omelet, the one covered in bearnaise sauce…that normally cost $15.99! This day IHop was unusually quiet, except for the gentlemen across the aisle who was watching You Tube with his phone’s loud speaker. I commented to my husband how I thought it rude, and he reminded me to practice RMA. That’s what we call a relaxed mental attitude. RMA is an attitude free of mental sins (like anger), respecting the volition and privacy of others. My husband is an expert at RMA. I am not.
I told my husband I’d been practicing for the last five minutes but didn’t think I could take it. My attitude was hanging on the fence. I thought about asking the man to please turn his phone down but feared a scene. I tried staring down You Tube man. If we made eye contact, I would give him the evil eye. Of course, he never looked up from his phone.
When my omelet came, I noticed the bearnaise sauce was missing. On top of that, we ordered sourdough toast, but got whole wheat. Still working on my RMA, I patiently waited for the server to return, and asked for my bearnaise sauce and toast replacement while You Tube man enjoyed his show. I was determined not to let You Tube man spoil my free omelet but felt myself wavering.
During war, commanders send out recon to see what the enemy is up to. In Christianity, the Holy Spirit serves as our recon, by sending up a red flag warning to alert us to danger. In this case the danger was self-centered arrogance. Yes, You Tube man was self-centered and arrogant. But the Holy Spirit was sending up the red flag, not to warn me of You Tube man, but to warn me of my own self-centered arrogance that was ready to respond in anger.
The Holy Spirit will alert us to an attack of the enemy, so we can take evasive action before we sin. In my case, the enemy was not You Tube man, but my sin nature trying to rear its head. The Holy Spirit was warning me that I was in a spiritual battle. Satan was using You Tube man to anger me, and I needed to take evasive action before I gave in to anger.
Any sin, including mental sins will separate us from fellowship with God. Our sin nature continually temps us to sin in small ways so we won’t notice that we sinned. But the Holy Spirit continually sends up red flags to warn us. If we don’t take evasive action and we sin, we fall out of fellowship and our spiritual walk and witness becomes neutralized. We are then no longer an effective soldier, ambassador, or witness for Christ. Can you see Satan’s strategy here?
I chose to take evasive action and asked God the Father for the Holy Spirit to give me the strength to ignore You Tube man and forgive the server and cook for messing up our order. I began to focus on our meal and the pancakes that came with my omelet. When I looked up, You Tube man had left and I hadn’t even noticed. I gave the server a warm smile when she handed us the bill, and we tipped her well.
I had survived the attack because I listened to the Holy Spirit. As a result, I left the restaurant with a great attitude and a happy tummy, holding the hand of my happy husband that didn’t have to share a meal with an angry wife.
Cheers to RMA and the Holy Spirit!
