Mashed Potatoes

While preparing the final dishes for Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, my daughter, Kerrie, asked me to check the potatoes. So I did. She asked me if they were ready to be drained and mashed. Not even! I told her that I stirred them but they had not changed. She then ask how high she had set the heat. Oh it was on high but the potatoes were still hard. A little longer in this heat should do it. This will soften these potatoes and we will be able to make these things into what we want them to be. Mashed Tators! Yes!

I thought about that while I was going about making the rest of the dishes. Sometimes we are like those potatoes. God speaks to us through the preaching of His Word or through the reading of His Word. Sometimes He will speak to us through someones testimony. There are times that He will speak to us through a friend. Other times He will impress things upon our hearts. We KNOW when God has spoken to us. We are stirred in our hearts but we are not changed. We are tossed about like those potatoes in a pot of boiling water. We are moved for a moment of time with what we hear but not enough to change our life and become pliable in His hands. Moved but not enough to become what it is He wants us to become.

The potato has to go through extreme heat in the oven or microwave in order to reach perfection of "Baked Potato". Once again reaching that place of soft and pliable service. To become a french fry the potato must go through the process of extreme boiling in grease. This will soften said potato into a tasty dish which most people can not turn away. However you want to eat your potato, it must first go through the fire and become soft and pliable so that it can be made into what ever dish it is you want it to be. So it is with us. Before we can become whatever it is God wants us to become, we must go through the fire. We have to have our hearts softened. We have to have things removed from us that ought not to be there. You see, the fire also purifies and removes things. It cleanses as it softens. The longer we stay in the fire the more pliable we become in His hands. Yet He will NEVER force you to become pliable in His hands. He will try you and test you and if you choose not to become pliable in His hands He will then release you and let you go. He can only work with a soft, willing heart.

Hard baked potatoes are no good! Hard undone french fries are no good! Mashed Potatoes with hard lumps in them, to me, are no good! A hard heart to God, is a heart that He can not work with. It is not pliable in His hands.


I want to be pliable in the hands of God. I want my heart to be right before Him. Psalms 139:23-24; "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.