Eating Hollow Cake

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Imagine you are at a wedding. Everything has been beautiful. The ceremony was sweet and romantic. The bride and groom are looking longingly into each other's eyes. Everyone is standing around the cake. Pictures are being snapped. The happy couple slowly lowers the knife into the beautiful, well decorated cake. As they carefully remove the slice to put it on a plate everyone notices that there is, in fact, no cake. It is all a thin layer of frosting. The cake is hollow!

Strange and a bit disappointing. Some of you people out there don’t mind. You prefer the sugary frosting over the cake, anyway. But I think that it is the careful balance of the moist cake and sweet frosting that makes a cake exceptional.

The other day when talking to my husband, we discussed how people are missing out on so much of the best parts of God. They focus on going to heaven. They focus on “no more pain” or “no more sin,
” but they don’t realize that those things are the frosting. They are not the substance of God’s goodness, and they are not even the extent of what Yeshua died to give us. 

The point of all this, from beginning to end, has been the relationship with him. It begins with a relationship with him in Eden and ends with an invitation to relationship with him in Revelation. His character is the fullness of every good thing. He is flawless and leads the example of what a flawless person ought to be like. Relationship with him opens the doors to growth, understanding, enlightenment, reconciliation, and eventually paradise with him.


The entire point of heaven, the entire point of paradise, is HIM! Yet we settle for just a slice of frosting when we speak longingly of never having to “work and toil again.” We settle for so much less when we focus on the external, when we fail to realize what a relationship with him would do within us.

The mark of someone who follows him, has a relationship with him and learns from him, has been how he or she differs from the world around them, both in their thinking and their actions. Despite the fact that we teach from pulpits, books, and seminars that this difference from the world is a heart thing, we fail to accomplish the follow-through. We try to address our thoughts and feelings and push them down, condemning them as “sinful,” and then try to act on what we are “supposed” to be thinking and feeling. In so doing, we fail to understand the base ingredient in the new person. Yeshua!

Oh, yeah. Remember him? The one that is supposed to save you. Yeah, it’s not just theoretical. But the truth of having sin and all its counterparts destroyed within us has been relegated to a theological idea rather than an actual happening. Ergo, no change. No new person. No difference from the world around you. No nothing. You got squat.

(Romans 12:2, Proverbs 1:15, Psalm 1:1, Proverbs 4:14-15, Romans 12:6, Galatians 3:28, 1 Peter 2:9 , Philippians 2:15 , 1 Samuel 16:7, 1 Corinthians 12:12-25 , 1 John 2:15-17, Ephesians 4:17-24, Leviticus 18:2-4, 1 Peter 4:3-4)


“But, I prayed the prayer. That means I’m saved.”

Sure, whatever that means. Saved from what? Saved from your sin? No you aren’t. Without a change in your heart and mind, something that can only happen through relationship with him, you are still subject and slave to sin. That is where we get the saying, “I’m still a sinner saved by grace.” Being saved by grace removes you from the sinner category and moves you into the saint category. Sorry, I realize I’m stepping on A LOT of toes across several denominations. Ask me if I care. (I don’t.)

My point is, we say we are saved but we fail to see the deep unmovable truth of scripture when choosing to just look toward heaven, rather than focus on what we have right now. So many people lose themselves looking to the heavens, waiting for him to come back. Look, I want him to come back, too. Not because I need him to save me from the big bad world, (although that will be nice), not because I’m tired of struggle and strife (although that will be nice, too), not because I need saving from my sins (I’m experiencing that right now), but because I miss the person that I love.

Some of you could get to heaven and not even notice if he wasn’t there. But for those of us that have clung to him for dear life while the facade of this life unravels around us, there is nothing more precious than his presence. And that is the most important thing of heaven, salvation, scripture, and the whole stinking universe. And it’s sad that so many people are missing it. 



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