How can something from a bitter bean taste (after being roasted) so good? The answer, and this is the truth, is found in Genesis 1:29 which says “And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food”.

This is the Source of everything good! The sauce of everything good is what we do with it. I have been around cocoa or cacao trees a few times in the past, and marveled at the cocoa pod fruit and its rich dark beans. If you hold one of those things in your hands, split open and taste the actual fruit, it is a sweet pulp with between 30-40 seeds. It is only after those same sweet tasting seeds are dried out, fermented and roasted, that we get the beginnings of some yummy chocolate products!

South Americans, Ivory Coast, Ghana and a couple Asiatic countries produce almost all of the world’s cocoa plants. But it originated right here in the western hemisphere and was introduced to the Spanish conquistadors by the Aztecs. History tells us that the Spaniards saw Montezuma drinking endless amounts of what was the first chocolate latte when he had huge goblets of ground up cocoa flavored with cinnamon and/or vanilla, whipped up to a froth! This was before Bunn Capuccino machines or Starbucks! The flavoring had to be added because the beverage had a bitter taste.

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FROM BROOKLYN TO THE KINGDOM!

One of my favorite people in the world to read is also the lead pastor of the greatest church on the eastern seaboard of America – the Brooklyn Tabernacle Church. That man is Jim Cymbala, whose books Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire and Breakthrough Prayer played a major role in the development of the prayer ministry, which God gave me as a lifestyle. His church has given us the world-famous, award-winning Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir!

Many think of the Brooklyn Tab as a new mega-church. However it has been around for almost 165 years! Founded in 1847 as the Central Presbyterian Church, when the presbyterians were the major revivalists of America, the church went through many phases! It was destroyed by fire twice and a thunderstorm once. When one of those fires destroyed it in 1894, it had over 6000 members. After that, the Tabernacle floundered and fizzled until the 1980s when Jim and Carol Cymbala were called by God to take over a dying church of 30 people.

Through many hardships; financial difficulties; spiritual warfare attacks and general days of despair, they persevered. They persevered not in their own strength but in the same kind of love we see demonstrated in today’s passage. How did they persevere? Prayer, Praise and the Power of Love!

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