Stay in Your Lane! (aka…What I Learned from Eating and Reviewing 20 Chicken Sandwiches)

I’ve picked up a new hobby: writing food reviews. Strange, I know. But I am enjoying it. Recently I’ve been reviewing chicken sandwiches. Currently, I have tried twenty different chicken sandwiches and have posted eighteen reviews, with the remaining two reviews coming soon.

The new Classic Chicken Sandwich from Popeyes

My biggest takeaway so far? Stay in your lane!

What I mean by that is this… for the most part, if you want a really good chicken sandwich, you should go to a chicken restaurant, as opposed to a burger joint. While I am not going to reveal my chicken sandwich rankings just yet, I will say that of my top five, only one burger restaurant is among them.

What does this have to do with anything spiritual? Here’s some ways that wisdom applies to the Christian life:

If your primary spiritual gift is teaching, but you don’t have the gift of evangelism, while you should still seek to be a faithful witness for Christ, focus your energies in developing and deploying your teaching gift. And vice versa. Gifted evangelists should spend most of their time honing and exercising their gift.

If you are not an expert in a given area, think twice before correcting or criticizing someone who is an expert in that area.

For example, several years ago an aspiring young photographer approached my Dad (an accomplished photojournalist), asking him to take a look at her professional portfolio. He was glad to help, and prefaced his comments by telling her he would be honest with her, in order to best help her develop and improve her craft. As he was making recommendations, instead of gratefully making note of his counsel, she chose to argue with him about his critiques. She never made it as a photographer.

God has designed you and wired you in a magnificent way (see Psalm 139.13-16). He has a wonderful plan to use you for His glory. Don’t try to be somebody you are not. Discover your divine design. Once you discover how He has designed you and wired you and gifted you, be the best YOU God has created you to be. Stay in YOUR lane!

 

The Sin of Hiding Behind a Keyboard

Lately I’ve been noticing how easy it is for people to be negative and critical about others behind the safety of a keyboard (aka “the internet”). It’s a whole lot easier to say bad things about people you have never met, people who are only an image on a screen. Things are a lot different when you are face-to-face with them.

A few years ago, Jimmy Fallon and All-Star baseball player Robinson Cano set up a humorous prank that illustrates this reality. Please take four minutes to watch this…

What’s really sad is that there are a lot of Christians who are guilty of negatively judging others who they have never met. And far too often they don’t even have enough evidence before going public with their judgments, via blogs, Facebook, twitter, and other social media outlets.

For example, I recently came across a so-called “discernment ministry” website which had a long list of “false teachers.” While perhaps some of them are indeed false teachers, there were some pastors and evangelists listed that I would need to see some credible evidence to back up the charge. So I utilized the search feature on their website and found that these “discernment” bloggers provided no evidence to back up their charges against some of these men.

While falling short of the legal definition of slander, this kind of thing is definitely malice, and is sinful behavior.

So, here’s a challenge to all of us. Before we say something unkind to someone or about someone, let’s make sure we aren’t hiding behind the keyboard. Then, let’s make sure we have plenty of credible evidence to back up our charge. Finally, let’s only speak of them as if we were standing there in front of them, and the people who love them.