BROWN M&Ms

In the spring of 1981, the rock band Van Halen came to Pueblo, Colorado, to perform at the university there. They didn’t end up doing the show, but it was for a very weird reason. At that time, Van Halen had the biggest stage set up, consisting of nine semis full of equipment. Amazingly, their contract wasn’t much better. It was very long and detailed. One of the stipulations in the contract was for a bowl of M&Ms to be placed in their dressing room. But that was not all, they asked for all of the brown M&Ms to be removed from the bowl. Many thought this was a ridiculous request, but they had a reason behind the madness. What they discovered was that if any brown M&Ms remained in the bowl they had requested, the people couldn’t be trusted to set the stage up right. They had so much equipment on the stage with them when they performed, they didn’t want to have the chance of it collapsing on them while they were playing. When they came out to Pueblo and saw that the brown M&Ms hadn’t been removed, they cancelled the show. As it turns out, if they hadn’t cancelled, they probably would have been seriously injured or perhaps even killed. In the early stages of set up before they had called off the show, the stage had collapsed on the gym floor at the university they were to play at, causing $80,000 worth of damage to that gym floor.

Just like Van Halen, God has given us a contract we must follow. In it, God asks us to do specific duties while we are here on earth. One of those duties is to repent from our sins, meaning we turn from them and don’t look back. So I ask you, what are your brown M&Ms? What are those sins that you are having a hard time turning from and that are stopping you from being prepared for Christ’s return? Matthew 24:44 says, “For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.” I ask you to start picking your sins out of your life, so you can be ready for this judgment day.

Picking out those brown M&Ms for Van Halen was time consuming and very meticulous, but it had to be done in order to fulfill their requests. Getting rid of your sins can also be time consuming and meticulous, but it must be done in order to fulfill Christ’s requests. I want you to pick one specific sin. When you pick that sin, I want you to get out a concordance or get on BibleGateway.com and look up a scripture that pertains to it. If it is anger, find a scripture that speaks to that. If it is lust, find a scripture that helps you with that. Then, I want you to memorize the scripture and every time you think about sinning the next day, recite that memory verse. This might sound dumb to you, and it might sound like a lot, but it really does help. This is how Christ resisted Satan in the wilderness. If you do this and it works for you, do it until you conquer that sin and move on to the next, and to the next. Because when Christ comes back, I sincerely hope and pray you took time to pick out your brown M&Ms.

–Joe Wilkie