There is a Chick-fil-A near where I work.\u00a0 I don’t know how much chicken they sell on a week-end, but during lunch hour on a week-day they sell a boat load. I have never seen a fast food restaurant run more efficiently.<\/p>\n
I went there for lunch on Friday.\u00a0 After enjoying a delicious “number 4,”\u00a0 I sat and watched the drive-thru line for a few minutes.\u00a0 It was amazing.\u00a0 They have two lines going at once for the order taking.\u00a0 The lines merge into one to meet the guy at the window.\u00a0 He’s hanging out the window when you get there, with his hand stuck out waiting to be paid.\u00a0\u00a0 The food is bagged and ready.\u00a0\u00a0 I sat and counted 10 cars going through the drive-thru in 3 minutes.\u00a0\u00a0 That’s 18\u00a0seconds per order.\u00a0 Ordered, cooked, bagged, paid, and delivered in 18 seconds.\u00a0 And the order process\u00a0inside<\/em> the store is just as fast.<\/p>\n On any given week-day you can find cars\u00a0lined up into the street around this Chick-fil-A, despite the fact that they have TWO order lines.\u00a0\u00a0 People wait in the\u00a0long lines because Chick-fil-A sells a good product and because\u00a0even though the line is long, the wait isn’t.\u00a0 It’s inspiring to me to see how successful this business is.\u00a0 They sell more food than anybody else around, and they do it in six days instead of seven.\u00a0<\/p>\n I once had an atheist friend tell me that maybe Truett Cathy (the owner of Chick-fil-A)\u00a0could sell even MORE chicken if he stayed open on Sunday.\u00a0 I told him I didn’t think so.\u00a0 Besides, isn’t that what everybody else is doing?\u00a0 Truett Cathy’s message is clear:\u00a0 Honor God and keep him first.\u00a0 Because everybody knows he is closed on Sunday, every chicken sandwich comes with that message.<\/p>\n Jesus fed 5,000 people with a little boy’s lunch,\u00a0but just like Truett Cathy, he had a message.\u00a0\u00a0The people had a hungry belly, and Jesus didn’t want that need to get in the way of his message, so he fed them, and in doing so, sent\u00a0a message about his care and provision.\u00a0 Here’s the point of this lunch time story:\u00a0 I think too often we get caught up in the\u00a0“how Jesus did it” and miss the point of the “what Jesus did.”\u00a0<\/p>\n In\u00a0the gospel of John we hear Jesus\u00a0say “Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake.”\u00a0 I always thought of that as ” . . . believe me because of the miracles you’ve seen me do . . .”\u00a0 But this week as I read it, it struck me differently.\u00a0 What if Jesus was talking\u00a0about work in the sense of “things accomplished?”\u00a0 When I read the 14th chapter of John that way, it comes alive with new meaning.\u00a0 Jesus\u00a0“accomplishes” the things the Father wants him to do, and we should believe him for the sake of the things that yet need to be accomplished.\u00a0 Now I can ask the Father for things in Jesus’ name\u00a0\u00a0(i.e. for Jesus sake) in order to\u00a0bring\u00a0about those\u00a0works (accomplishments)\u00a0that are the will of the Father.\u00a0\u00a0And Jesus says we will do even greater works than he did because he was not talking about the “how” but the “what.”\u00a0<\/p>\n Jesus fed 5,000 people and in the process preached the message of the kingdom to them.\u00a0 Mr. Cathy has fed millions, all the while sending the simple Kingdom message: “Keep God first.”\u00a0 I believe they both accomplished the work of the Father.\u00a0 Jesus did it with a miracle.\u00a0 Mr Truett Cathy\u00a0does it with good food, a fast drive-thu and a simple sign, “Closed on Sunday.”<\/p>\n Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. \u00a0And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it. There is a Chick-fil-A near where I work.\u00a0 I don’t know how much chicken they sell on a week-end, but during lunch hour on a week-day they sell a boat load. I have never seen a fast food restaurant run more efficiently. I went there for lunch on Friday.\u00a0 After enjoying a delicious “number 4,”\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[30,31,29],"class_list":["post-618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consider","tag-accomplishments","tag-miracles","tag-works"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=618"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":629,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions\/629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – John 14:10-14\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"