Recipe For Life

At the end of this God wants you to search your heart for the answer…….

I was having a conversation with my aunt the other day about a certain meat I don’t like because every time I make it it comes out different, sometimes good and sometimes bad.

She asked me “Do you follow a recipe?”

I answered “No I don’t you know, I cook by sight”

She then said “Well, if you follow a recipe, it will come out good every time”

My auntie loves a good recipe book and has a whole shelf in her kitchen dedicated to recipe books, she’ll pop one out every time she making something and won’t cook without a recipe unless she studied a recipe and feels confident enough to cook a dish without one.

I don’t, I just learnt to cook by throwing in whatever you have and what seems like it will go with something; adjust if necessary, taste and add.

Something about this stirred my spirit days later, I can’t remember what I was thinking about but I applied this to the Christian walk.

When I first got baptised, I did it because it was what everyone else what doing, I was doing it by sight and not because I referred to “the Recipe Book” I went to baptism classes and when asked why do I want to get baptised; I gave the most generic, cliché answer: because I believe that Jesus died on the cross. While that was true; I did believe Jesus died for me, I had no idea why! Why did God send His Son to die for my sins? What is sin anyway? It meant nothing to me at the time. I was living a Christian life by sight, I was getting baptised because every one was getting baptised, I wanted to fit in, I wanted to roll with the cool kids and say I was baptised, I wanted to wear that label.

When the altar call was made to be filled with the Holy Spirit, I was there with my hands raised, “being filled with the Holy Spirit” and I was filled that night……I made people believe, I was mimicking what someone else was saying; ‘cooking by sight’ I was only lying to myself, God saw and He knew and I’m very sure I broke His heart by doing this.

I had a brief “walk” with God when I was younger, I was ‘cooking by sight’ I wasn’t really following the recipe book; the Bible. What I was doing was lying and pretending just so I could be accepted at church, I can’t even blame the people at church for not noticing because I played it well; ‘cooking by sight’

Years later I began, again, this walk with God, this time around I wanted to take it seriously, I prayed and asked God to give me a desire to want to be in His presence, a zeal and a passion to serve Him. I found myself going to church every Sunday, I remember saying “God when I get my car back I’ll definitely go to church” but He had other plans, I went to church every Sunday and when I didn’t I felt something was missing. I read His Word and I had no idea what it was saying; forget APPLYING it, I had no idea what that meant, I read and I prayed, kept on reading and kept on praying.

Its now clear the reason why I had to read; because I had to know what His promises to me are, I had to know who He is, I had to know what pleases Him, I had to know what His dislikes are, He sent me there, to His Recipe Book, to know more about Him. It’s a relationship, its like reading about my most favourite hero, it’s like putting in more of the same effort I put into getting a boy to like me. And THEN applying His Word to my life, His recipe to my dish. Cooking my life with His recipe, no longer looking at people trying to mimic their actions and words, I don’t have to, He has given me the words to speak from His Recipe Book, living my life as His Recipe Book commands, seeking Him, loving Him, talking to Him; as His Recipe Book shows me how to.

I just wanna say to anyone reading this that it’s okay if you don’t know what you’re doing. Its okay if you don’t know how to worship, God is looking for the pure in heart, to worship Him in spirit and in truth. Just be true to yourself because you really can’t lie to God, don’t fool yourself, be open about what you want from God. He said in His Word that if you delight yourself in Him, He WILL give you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37 v 4).

Follow His Recipe wholly and totally and be careful not to miss any ingredient out and that’s where you’ll see yourself growing in Him, spiritually through His Holy Spirit.

God bless!!! J