Your Recipe

          I think I am a decent cook, but I know that I am not a great cook. I have been known to burn things a time or two and make stupid mistakes when I am cooking. Part of my problem is that I try and multi-task and I get distracted. If I had a dollar for every time I get distracted while I am cooking and then suddenly remembered I had something on the stove I would be a much wealthier woman. Another one of my problems with cooking is that I am not very adventurous. I have about 2 or 3 seasonings that I use on almost everything I make and I tend to make the same things over and over. If you come to my house for dinner chances are we are going to have lasagna. It is my go to company food. I know how to make a good lasagna, and know my recipe by heart. I always think I will try and be more adventurous with my cooking, but when I pull up recipes if they have more than about 5 ingredients, I usually just skip on to the next one. Every once in a while I do try something new, but often think that I will leave out a few of the ingredients that don’t sound good to me like some of the spices or herbs. You can get away with this in cooking, but in baking it is a little more difficult.

          When you bake a cake, in order for the cake to turn out you have to follow the directions precisely or it won’t be right. You can’t look at the recipe and just say, “I don’t really care for the way baking powder tastes in the can, so I think I should just skip it”. If you skip any of the ingredients your cake will not turn out right. It would be runny or flat. If you try some of the ingredients on their own they just do not taste good at all, but when you put them together they make a yummy cake. Sometimes you may be out of a particular ingredient you need, but not all hope is lost, because you can often find something else to substitute into the mix.  Another thing about baking is that you also can’t stick a cake in the refrigerator because you don’t like heat and expect it to bake. The heat is a necessary element in baking the cake. Without the time of baking in the heat a cake could not serve its purpose which is to be eaten.

          Our lives are a bit like this. We go through circumstances in our lives- some of them are good and some of them are a little bit bitter, but each circumstance is an ingredient in our life. The things we experience every day add a different item needed to make us the person we are supposed to be. The circumstance enhances us and makes us better. We have some things we go through that are like the sugar in the cake- sweet sweet seasons, such as having children, getting married, getting saved. These are the times we wish we could always live because they are fun and taste good. Other times seem bitter- job changes, sickness, death of a loved one; these times may even feel like we are being put in the heat of the oven. The heat does not feel good, but the cake will not come out the perfectly formed cake if it wasn’t for the heat. The times we feel that we are going through the flame are not fun and we might even question why we are going through those times, but we can have the assurance that we would not be allowed in this time of preparation if it wasn’t serving a purpose. These times may be tough, but we can have hope knowing God will work it out for our good because in Romans 8:28 the word says, “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.”

          Have you ever baked with a child and they wanted the food to be done immediately so they could eat it, and when you take it out of the oven they don’t want to take the time to let it cool. You might tell them they need to be patient, and when we are going through the more bitter seasons we need to learn to be patient as well. Hebrews 10:36 says, “Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God’s will. Then you will receive all that he has promised.” I know I have had times in my life where I feel like I just can’t understand what God is doing. I feel uncomfortable and I want things to change right now. The hardest thing to do in these seasons is be patient. There are times when people hurt and disappoint you, times when you may believe that God is moving you in a direction, but you feel like the elevator stopped moving and you are just trapped. There may even be times when you have stepped outside of God’s best for your life and you haven’t gone in the direction you were supposed to go, God can even use that time and circumstance as a valuable ingredient in your life.

          Jeremiah 29:11 says that God knows His plans for you, they are plans to prosper you and not harm you, but to give you hope and a future. God is not surprised by your sweet times or by your bitter times. The heat that you may feel in your life is not a surprise to Him either. He knows the ingredients that are needed to make up your life. There may be times that you choose a wrong ingredient for your own life, but the cool thing with God is He has a way of finding just the right combination of ingredients to get to the correct finished product. He knows in advance the decisions you are going to make and already has a plan in place to adjust your recipe and get you to where you need to go. It is easiest if we follow the recipe that God has for our life, but we can be assured that God will be able to take our lives and make them the beautiful creation that He intends for them to be if we just let Him. We may have to trust and be patient in the times that seem too hard, but when we give Him control to write the recipe and we choose to follow Him we can know that through the whole process He will make us the beautiful creation He intends us to be.