I made these Keto Coffee Cupcakes with Sugar-Free Caramel drizzle after the stove incident.
Kitchen Fires
I think I might have figured out the one downside to the Ketogenic Diet. If you cook bacon all the time you might actually set your stove on fire. I don’t know. I’m just saying. I did that this week. I literally started a fire in my kitchen.
I was boiling water in the tea kettle when the burner on the electric stove burst into flames. I removed the kettle and got a big pot lid and tried to smother it but it just kept on burning! Then I really started to freak out and called 911 and told the kids to get out of the apartment. It finally went out on its own but the firemen showed up anyway.
As it turns out, nothing is wrong with our stove. Which leaves me to conclude that bacon grease is the culprit. I could never blame bacon for anything. Bacon would never do this to me. We’ve been friends since the beginning of this Keto Diet thing. It had to be the bacon grease! 😉
So, with the drama over and done with and a good lesson for the children in fire safety–and possibly stove maintenance–we pressed on with our week.
Evangi-Shirts
Without the use of our stove for a few days (we had to get it looked at), we had to venture out for food. Even our morning coffee (usually aeropressed to perfection by my hubby) had to be replaced with Starbucks temporarily. While he was out and about getting us what we needed, he was stopped by a man in a wheel chair. The man had seen his shirt– the one with the man in the wheel chair that gets prayed for and ends up getting up out of the wheel chair and walking off. The man liked it so much that he wanted to take a picture of it. He asked RK what the shirt meant. RK got to share with him how the first miracle he ever got to see was when someone who couldn’t walk started walking again. RK ended up having a really good conversation with the guy. Sometimes your Jesus shirt ends up being your opener to sharing the good news with someone. I never gave much thought to wearing Jesus apparel but it seems that God is quite capable of using anything for evangelism.
Side note: I think RK sells these t-shirts.
Other Fires
After a great weekend of learning from Danny Silk about the Culture of Honor, we had plenty to share with our church on Sunday. The cool thing was that we weren’t the only ones that wanted to share. It seems our guys are really starting to get the idea behind following and fishing for Jesus. They’ve been going out and doing the stuff, too. I love that. I love seeing the body of Christ empowered and becoming “Master Seed Sowers” –as RK calls it.
Because our church is relatively small, we spend the first part of the service eating coffee and doughnuts and talking about how we’ve done following Jesus that week. It can be as simple as choosing to forgive someone. Then we talk about how we’ve done fishing for Jesus that week. How did we share the good news with someone. Danny Silk talked about how the staff meetings at Bethel start off with the good news happening in their community and how it can often go on for over an hour. I couldn’t help but feel like a similar fire is beginning within our own little church family.
In the Summer, we let the kids take a dip in the ocean after we serve pizza. RK stayed and talked with a group of guys while we played in the water.
Putting Out Fires
Okay, so I’m not proud of this but I thought I should share. Two conferences ago, I waited in line with the kiddos to make sure that we got good seats. Anyone with kids knows what a challenge it can be to tell your kids to stand in a line for an hour. Anyway, I’d wait for seats and save them and go and take the kids to childcare. Well, on one particular evening of the conference I came back to find that some ladies had taken my seats. I asked my Mom about it and she said they had asked and that she had given them my seats. Well, to say that I was irritated would be putting it mildly. Especially, since they ended up telling me that they weren’t from that church and that they should be welcomed. I told her that it wasn’t my church either and that I had waited for those seats but she basically rebuked me for not being okay with her taking my seats.
I guess I was really frustrated because it seemed to me that she was saying she was entitled to those seats. I disagreed completely. There was an entire other room filled with overflow seating. I had waited for over an hour with my kids. My kids!!! So I sat there trying to worship Jesus…all the while stewing inside. These ladies are supposed to be Christians! They basically just pushed and shoved and bullied their way into my seats and then tried to guilt trip me into feeling bad about wanting to keep what I’d worked for. There’s nothing I hate more than feeling manipulated. I can’t stand it when people use the Bible or God to try to get what they want. And I can’t stand entitlement. Well, anyway, those were the kinds of things that I was thinking. I wasn’t just frustrated. I was angry. So, we get to the end of the evening and I feel like the Holy Spirit is telling me to apologize to those ladies. I was shocked. I sat there thinking that there was no way in hell that I was going to do that. And maybe that was the problem. They were in the wrong. I was totally justified in my anger. But gently the Holy Spirit told me to forgive them and to ask for forgiveness. So…after a few minutes of trying to argue my way out of the discomfort I was about to face, I asked them for forgiveness. They forgave me. (It still makes me cringe inside.) So all was well. We hugged and I let it go.
Fast-forward to the Danny Silk Conference this weekend. I walk into the meeting only to find out that those same ladies are sitting behind me. Directly behind me! In that entire place with hundreds of seats they ended up directly behind me. And this time around, there was no hiding my connection to the group that was hosting the conference…because they had RK and I pray for Danny and Sherri from the stage. So I had never felt so relieved in my life that I had asked for forgiveness and smoothed things out with those ladies. God is funny like that. Unforgiveness and bitterness can be a little spark that turns into a flame that hurts the church. And let me tell you, I was burning with anger that night. But thankfully that fire got put out.
