Lemon Laws

In my consideration for my first post I am reluctant to post too many details of my past struggles and dilemmas that brought me to the place that I discovered the “lesson” or message I want to engage with you in. I will just say that I reached a real spiritual bottom..a dark, lonely desert, one where I was utterly demolished. I spent about three years in that desert, although it was like an eternity that had no end or hope in sight. However, it was then that my life was magnificently transformed forever…I met God for the first time. Yep, for the first time, and I had been a Christian for years. I put it this way when I share the entire story with people…”it was the best worst experience of my life”. So what did I learn when I arrived at the Other Side Of Misery (title of a book that I am writing)…I learned the Law of the Lemon. I will share part of the book with you as I will just cut and paste a couple of sections with you here on my blog. If you like it, I may be more inspired to complete this work and then you can view the rest of it then. Thanks for reading and I welcome your thoughts, CONSTRUCTIVE criticism, and encouragement.

From the “book in progress” The Other Side Of Misery:

…The Bible says that “…all things work together for good for those who love God…” This is true but the part that we miss is that they do work together for good…eventually. Time is an effective teacher of patience. I was so ready for all of this to work together it wasn’t even funny, but it wasn’t until years later did this experience just begin to make sense. My experience here and others mentioned are deep and personal and I am just sharing the highlights to help make a connection with you. To you who may be in similar situations and are tempted to just say to this whole Christian thing, “Ah, forget it”. I was so close to that myself.

So where did I go wrong? What could I have done to elude this experience and pursued the right dream, my God ordained purpose? Well I am split on this. On one hand one could say that I had to go through these things to get to where I am right now, writing this material as a help to others in similar situations. Without that my credibility on this subject matter may perhaps not carry the same weight. On the other hand, to say it was God’s will for me and my family to go through all these things seems to be out of His character and He certainly wanted good things for me and for me to make good decisions that glorified Him. I am for the latter but that would require me to make good decisions and I apparently didn’t. Remember, all things work together.



God is the God of lemonade. Bet you never heard that one before. He and only He can truly take the real lemons in life and make it into a sweet nourishing glass of cool lemonade.

How do you make real lemonade? First you have to have a lemon. Brilliant, I know. Then the lemon has to be cut open and exposed. Next, you have to squeeze the lemon with a firm hand and repeat it over and over until there is no more juice left in that piece and then you grab the other one and do the same. Then you take some sugar and add to it. Then from there you add some cool water and you now have lemonade. When you combine all these ingredients to get lemonade and pour it over a glass of ice it becomes a beverage that is not only delicious and nutritious, but also refreshing.


We have to take our lemons in life, our foolish decisions, our mistakes, our sins and hand them to God. Yes, looking back on this decision to follow the path of full time youth ministry I can now honestly tell you that at that time, it wasn’t my purpose, calling or dream at all. Did I enjoy it the 13 years I was involved in it? Yes, absolutely. Was I good at it? Yes, absolutely. Were lives affected by what I did. Absolutely. Was it what I was created to do? Humm. Have you ever had a job you didn’t like but you were good at? I rest my case. It also goes for doing something you really enjoy and stink at it. I love to sing but I stink at it. Anyway, I digress, different sermon for a different Sunday.

Once you hand those lemons over and put them into the hand of God and allow him, yes I said allow Him, to cut you away from the things that brought you to the place you are. The cutting was for me a severing, kind of like the severing that takes place at an alter, it was painful and “bloody” because it also cuts you open and exposes you for who you really are…yikes. Then we have to allow God to squeeze the stuff out of it so that it can become something of nourishment, something that is refreshing to not only you but to others as well, you can bring a purpose out of it and bring glory to God from it. The squeezing process is not easy or fun. It is a lot of work to get it all out and can take some time as well. It is messy and sticky and if you have any wounds, the juice will find its way there and let you know it has arrived. By the time the lemon is through being squeezed all that is left is a tore, wrinkled peel of shredded pulp. Not worth much. Broken. You have heard the term “beaten to a pulp”. All the good stuff is out ready to be used. The funny this is, that at this point everything is still sour, only God can sweeten it.

The sweetener is if we will let God use this and we allow Him to grow us from each experience. We must be humble after this shredding of ourselves and yield to how God is going to bring good from this. It is to easy and tempting to allow these things in life, these consequences from our foolish decisions or even from the decisions of others, to ruin our lives and then turn and be angry at God for it as if it were His fault. “God, why am I suffering, why is this happening, why me, why, why, why?” we go over and over in our heads. And when we don’t want to hear the real truth we turn on God and become bitter and even angry with Him and even others that care for us.

“People ruin their lives by their own foolishness and then are angry at the Lord”
Proverbs 19:3 (NLT)

We begin our cycle of PMS (Poor Me Syndrome) and see things through that perspective and prism. We see those who are delighting in the Lord as an enemy and those who are prospering as a foe. But, if we humble ourselves before God He said that He would lift us up.

He will lift you up in a way that glorifies Him through the change that is brought in you. He is glorified (lifted up) in you as you humble yourself through this process. Part of being humbled is humility and humility in my opinion is a choice. A choice to verbally and spiritually say to God I am nothing. I am a mess and I am hereby giving you full reign in my life to do as you please…no matter what is required of me. No matter what I have to go through in order for you to mold me, change me, make me and take me to where I need to be and need to go. When you say that and mean it, get ready, it’s coming.

This will conclude this post. I will post the next section of some addition dilemmas and some real practical truths and handy example on how you can take the Lemon Law and apply it to your life next week…until then.