Tutti Frutti
“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” Favorite hymn right there. I don’t know about you*, but I want to be happy in Jesus. Like…really happy. Like…truly happy. Not fakely happy. And not in a joyous sense; Christians are the worst about severing joy and happiness, pitting them against one another because of their natures—one being constant and the other circumstantial.** A painting is made of a seeming rivalry between two players of the same team. I want a joy that certifies and asserts and supports my happiness.
Can I share something with you? You prolly won’t relate…but I’ll share it anyway. I do not categorize the moment of—or the moments following—my alarm waking me from my slumber to be a happy part of the day. There is no Tigger in me, eager to spring forth like Lazarus from the grave. My nocturnal nesting wants to keep me like a suffocated, cocooned butterfly, and quite frankly, many days I wouldn’t mind staying confined.
But I know one thing—sleep won’t make me happy. The pot of tea I drink in the morning won’t make me happy…no matter how much honey or cream I add. Praying earnestly the night before that when I wake up I would be eager to get out of bed won’t make me happy. You know what makes me happy? Part of me hates that this is the case…but, obedience makes me happy. Many days I do my quiet time because I’m obligated. I’m a Christian, I’m a soldier, I’m a brother, I’m a pastor. O. B. L. I. G. A. T. I. O. N. Hear me, obligation is not bad, Paul references it a few times (Romans 13 is a good place to look). But obligation doesn’t make me happy; obedience does. Do I do work happily because I’m obligated to be at work? Or do I work happily because I’m obedient to being there? Not once have I been happy because I had to do it. Just throwing that out there.***
“what can be done daily to ensure that the most happiness is attained?”
So, as a Christian hedonist I have to ask the question of—and I think it’s wise if we ask—what can be done daily to ensure that the most happiness is attained?
In what I feel is part of the answer, let’s talk a bit about firstfruits. As I’ve been reading through Romans, a passage struck me right between the eyes. So many times have I read this verse and it never approach me. “If the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, so is the whole lump, and if the root is holy, so are the branches.” Romans 11:16. Paul is working through an analogy of promise and salvation toward Israel, referring to the firstfruit or root as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that his work and promise will come about to make holy the nation of Israel. For me and likely you, we feel the weight of this less in nationality and more in personality. So, how are firstfruits maintained in a daily realm of obedient giving?
We could start with defining firstfuit as an offering to the Lord. It is different than a normal offering, because a normal offering (tithe, grain, etc.) is quantitative. Meaning: you give what is your best to the Lord or you give up a prescribed amount, like 10 percent. There is also an atmospheric context to an offering represented in the word “best.” A firstfruit is an “assumed best” because it is all that’s there. Meaning: if you give your firstfruit, and all you had was your firstfruit, then you gave your best.
“The firstfruit is not about what we have to give; it’s about what we have to be. ”
So a firstfruit is a gift given to God that is defined neither in its quantitative or atmospheric measures but in its measure of subservience. This is where I feel the need to make a point of upmost importance. The firstfruit is not about what we have to give; it’s about what we have to be. You see, the firstfruit was never about the firstfruit nor was it about being blessed with a second fruit. In the old testament, and today, I feel they and we miss the heart of giving a firstfruit. Did God want the offering because he was hungry? He’s got like…a thousand cows on a thousand hills, or something like that…so we can rule that question out. The firstfruit was not about what we give or what we receive; it’s about what we are.
And a firstfruit can leave us in either one of two ways, empty and holey, or empty and holy. One way is preferred by man and the other by God. When we give all we have we will be left empty. No doubt.
“We don’t give a firstfruit because it is the first, we give the firstfruit because God is first.”
Can I ask a question? When you are left on empty, what happens to your attitude? If you skip lunch and dinner do you get hangry? What about your irritability level if you don’t get your morning tea/coffee? Our state of emptiness tells us something so incredibly important about the type of firstfruit we have given from our hearts. If we give and become irritable it is because what we gave satiated us. It satisfied. We don’t give a firstfruit because it is the first, we give the firstfruit because God is first. The firstfruit is given away because it competes with God for first place in our hearts.
What effect did Paul say that true firstfruit would have? If the firstfruit you have given is given in true holiness, you will be holy. Your attitude will be holy. God designed the world in such a way to use a symbol of the most “loss” to give us the most gain. When we give to God wholeness in our firstfruit, God gives to us holiness.
Now, to leave you here wouldn’t be quite fair. There is another aspect in how we define firstfruit that will lend itself to how we “practice” firstfruit. It is positional. First is first because it is not second or anything thereafter. So. What is your daily firstfruit? We rise with new mercies every day. We didn’t die in our sleep because of our sin, so how ought we relinquish our hearts to a new day? A Christian must have morning time alone with the Lord. I’m not going to say how much time, because it would easily turn what is lovely into legalism; but I will say that in order for the “whole lump” of the Christian daily experience to be holy, it has to start out holy.
We cannot give a firstfruit offering to the Lord at the middle or end of our day. We can offer up our time then; we might choose to read our bible before bed instead of watch another episode of Riverdale, or we might skip lunch to memorize a chapter of the bible instead of eating. But, when we give the first minutes of our day to the Lord, we say, “Here I am at the first, not because I’m the most comprehensive or the most prepared or the most convicted, but I trust that you can make me holy if I give to you everything now.”
Here’s to happily being the firstfruit, so that God might be first in all the earth.
*but I’m feeling twenty two.
** If this offended you, calm down
***This is probably because I’m a 7 on the enneagram