You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too!
As a child, I was both strange and pretty typical. While there are many examples I could give of how I was strange, one of the most poignant examples of just how typical I was as a child can be seen in the following story:
Every Saturday, my father would give each of us children (I had an older brother and I have a younger sister) one dollar of allowance. Most Saturdays, we would run down to the convenience store where we would spend the entire dollar on 1 and 2 cent candy (I realize this shows my age). This would happen every Saturday.
One Saturday, my brother decided that he would not go with us to the convenience store because he was going to save his money for fireworks for the upcoming Fourth of July celebration. My sister and I went to the store without him for several weeks. The weekend before the Fourth of July, my brother offered to go with us to the store if we could stop off at the fireworks stand for him to buy his fireworks, which we agreed to do.
While we were at the fireworks stand, I was amazed at all the fireworks my brother was placing in his red, plastic basket, but I did not say anything. I fully expected the man at the counter to tell him he did not have enough money, but he pulled out a small wad of one dollar bills and paid for a large bag of firecrackers, bottle rockets, parachutes, and poppers. Man, did he have a lot!
I decided I would use my money for fireworks as well, so I put together a much smaller assortment of those same fireworks, but had to put most of it back because all I had was a dollar. I asked (or maybe whined is a better word) for him to loan me some money to buy more fireworks, but he refused by saying that he had saved his money while I had wasted mine. I pouted all the rest of the way home while planning to tell my parents just how unfair he had been. I was certain that they would agree and make him share, but when I got home, I got a surprise.
My father agreed with my brother and told me, “Jack, you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. You have to choose one or the other.” I would like to say that I learned my lesson, but this is a lesson that I am still learning with having to decide to save for rainy day instead of buying something today.
In Hosea 6:7-11:11, the people of Israel were trying to tell God, through Hosea, that they were worshipping God faithfully, even though their sinful lives seemed to indicate otherwise. They wanted to be able to count on God for His deliverance and still get away with whatever they thought they wanted to do. Hosea had the difficult job of showing them they could not “have their cake and eat it, too.”
How about you? Do you get upset with God because He does not grant all of your wishes and desires? Do you sometimes wonder why other people at church come away glowing and mentioning the moving of the Spirit, while you sit there wondering just what they are talking about? Maybe, just maybe, you need to go back and confess your sins to God, prepare your heart to worship Him, focus on Him, love and serve others and see if your experience changes.
It just might…no, it will because then, you will be able to eat your cake trusting that God will provide all you need for as long as you need it.