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Marinating The process of becoming like Christ by Audra Johnson And thus the Lord spoketh to the weeping Audra, and said "Hey ... chill, lady. You're marinating." Marination, also known as marinating, is the process of soaking foods in a seasoned, often acidic liquid before cooking. It is commonly used to flavor foods and to tenderize tougher cuts of meat ...The process may last seconds or days. (wikipedia.org) When I marinate a piece of chicken, I take the little guy and stab him several times with a fork to make it more receptive to the marinade. Then, I mix together whatever horrible acidic, spicy, nasty-looking-and-smelling liquid I choose, and set the chicken in a container, piling it all up on top of him. The longer he sits in there with this stuff on him, the more flavorful and tender he emerges. Then I cook, eat, and enjoy. A much better chicken is he for having endured that torture. When God marinates (or prepares) His sons and daughters, He puts us through a gauntlet of tests and trials to determine our abilities, aptitude, and capacity for His service. Some of these tests really hurt. Some take away our pride, our comfort, our reliance on others. Some feel like there will be no end to them. All we can see are our open wounds, but God can see new openings and opportunities in which His strength, His wisdom, His discernment, His knowledge, His compassion, and His love can be absorbed. Those six things (and more!) make up the marinade He uses to prepare us, season us, and flavor us. He doesn't want bland chicken going out in the world sharing His good news and encouraging those He created! He wants something that is truly appealing, experienced, tender, and HUMAN! Somebody people can relate to! Someone who KNOWS how hard it is to simply exist nowadays, let alone how to actually be JOYFUL! Sounds great, right? But here comes the hard part ... the marination process. When I marinate my chicken, I don't take all the time to prepare it all just to dump the guy in there and pull him right out, simply coating him with the "illusion" of deliciousness. Nope. He stays in there until I'm good and ready to take him to the grill. He stays in there until I'm satisfied that HE'S ready to be cooked. Same with God. The marinade stinks. It's acidic. It's hard to live with. You see, as lovely as those things sounded (love, wisdom, etc.), we're not set up in such a way that we can just turn on a switch and "OH! Got it ... THAT'S wisdom!" Our Christ-like attributes have to come to us in the form of hard times. Trials. Rough situations we must live with. Lessons we must learn. And the process of preparing us for service involves a lot of sitting in all this. But God's not leaving us there to suffer — He's putting us there to make us the best quality people, parents, wives, husbands, friends, employees, SERVANTS of the Most High. So if you've been "marinating" for a long time, waiting on something to happen ... don't assume you've done something wrong or He's forgotten you. He doesn't do that. Whatever he has waiting for you may just require you to be a little more flavorful. Enjoy it. "Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and developed, not deficient in any way." James 1:2-4 (The Message)