Perfect Recipe

By Michelle Lim –

Over the holidays we come up with perfect cookie recipes and New Year appetizers, all in the hopes of impressing our guests.

In February, we long to come up with the perfect recipe for love. The perfect recipe for love occupies the attention of romantics all over the globe. Could it be true that opposites attract? Or are we looking for people with something in common?

No one really knows for sure what the perfect recipe is for each person, because every individual is unique.

How about the recipe for success? There are scads of books out there to address this question.

Somewhere in the midst of it all we forget one really important recipe; the perfect recipe for life.

A recipe has a variety of ingredients depending on the desired outcome. If you try to make peanut butter cookies with the recipe for ranger cookies, they wouldn’t turn out. When you finished you would have a batch of ranger cookies.

Why do we think that there is a perfect recipe for life that is the same for everyone?

The other day I was grousing about something that happened. Why did it happen to me and not someone else? Then God showed me that I am a ranger cookie minus the sprinkles.

God designed me to be a ranger cookie. I have a unique recipe of life experiences that create the person God designed me to be. If I use the peanut butter cookie recipe, I will not become who God intended and will not fulfill the perfect recipe He has for my life.

Sometimes there is nothing perfect about the ingredients. After all who wants to be pressed into the blender and spun mercilessly? But God is right there with us the whole time. He doesn’t bring the disaster, but He allows it to bring about His perfect will in our lives.

What kind of cookie are you? Do you wish you could be something else? God intended something amazing for your life. You have a perfect life recipe to bring about God’s amazing design.

David’s life was turbulent. There were times when he ran for his life and times when he served as Israel’s King. But some of his life must have felt like a recipe in the blender. Still, after he had run for his life, faced many hardships, and reveled in victories he still said this:

“Taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him” (Psalm 34:8 NIV).

They Think They Own the Place

By Charlotte Riegel –

Last summer we moved from a large (5 bedroom, 4 level split) house to a small 2 bedroom bungalow. After a great deal of downsizing we squeezed our still-too-many-belongings into our wee new home. It’s actually not that small, but to us it seems very tiny. I’m delighted to have only one bathroom instead of three to keep clean, and grateful for only two bedrooms to keep tidy… if you stretch it a bit, actually only one, the guest bedroom. In anticipation of this move, I also looked forward to a much smaller house to dust and vacuum.

Alas, even the smaller space is proving challenging, mostly because we have no carpets. I have good equipment, even a house vac to use on hard floors, and a variety of mops that work very well. Nevertheless, getting down to floor level to capture the notorious dust bunnies that hide everywhere is proving more challenging than I anticipated. During the summer, I basically ignored them, but once the weather kept me inside more, they began to taunt me. “Catch me if you can” they seemed to be calling as they swirled around, seemingly dancing with glee as I caught one but saw two more skitter under a couch.

I conceded defeat in my ability to control this menace and hired a young, agile, college student to spend an hour a week, vacuuming and dusting. She admitted to having worked in a hotel for a while so knew how to capture my little enemies. Then the holidays arrived and she went home. Since we were gone for several days as well I was surprised by how quickly the dust bunnies returned and took over. They are relentless and seem to insist they own this space and have a right to be here. Not so, say I, and begin to sweep my mops around finding as many as I can until my housekeeper returns to capture the many who continue to hide in difficult to access places.

As I hunt down these household enemies I am reminded to be on the alert for the enemy of my soul, who also seeks to invade my space whenever I let down my guard. One dares not take a spiritual vacation for, like the dust bunnies, he and his cohorts sneak in and gleefully occupy, causing a dirty mess of life.

PRAYER: Thank You, Lord, for all Your provisions to help me keep my spiritual house clean and in order. I desire to be on the alert for invaders who choose to rob me of a life pleasing to You. Sound the alarm when they show up and grant me courage and forthrightness to remove them swiftly. Amen.

“Be alert, be on watch! Your enemy, the Devil, roams around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Be firm in your faith and resist him, because you know that other believers in all the world are going through the same kind of sufferings. But after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who calls you to share His eternal glory in union with Christ, will himself perfect you and give you firmness, strength, and a sure foundation. To Him be the power forever! Amen”(1 Peter 5: 8-11 GNT).

Real Love Found Me

By Diane Mayfield –

I was a lonely, shy little girl longing to feel loved and wanted by someone. I often fantasized about belonging to a large family where I was the only girl. In that fantasy, all my brothers adored me. Of course, the fantasy didn’t last, so I was left in loneliness when it ended.

In my early elementary school years, I discovered that making really good grades won me a special place as Teacher’s Pet. So that became my goal. I set out at the beginning of the school year to win that place in each teacher’s heart. In that I could feel loved.

In junior high, I found there was an “in” group and worked hard to belong to the group, thinking that would give me the sense of being loved. At the same time, boys started paying attention to me. My world came alive with the thrill of boyfriends and popularity. It didn’t seem to bother me that I had to work hard to keep up these positions. I had no idea there was an unconditional love freely given if I just opened my eyes and believed.

As one might expect, looking for love in relationships with boys often led to self-destructive and abusive relationships. What I thought was love was not love at all. God in His goodness would use that path to later introduce me to true love.

At that time in my life, I made unwise choices. One choice in particular brought me to the end of myself. I needed forgiveness but I wasn’t really sure how to find it. Growing up Catholic, I was taught the way to forgiveness was by confessing to a priest. So, in my senior year in college, I went to a priest. I told him my story and my need for forgiveness.

He told me, and rightly so, that I didn’t really understand my faith and suggested that I take a class being offered to learn about it. I did.

One evening a laywoman came to the class and lead us in how to get alone with God. She took us through what I later understood to be a visualization exercise. It went like this. Imagine that you are in some quiet place. I imagined myself on a grassy green hillside overlooking water. Then she suggested that you see Jesus coming to you. What would you say to Him? I did just that. I saw in my mind Jesus walking to me with His hand outstretched to me. I took His hand and asked Him, “Why did you die for me?” His answer was, “Because I love you.”

I walked out that night and knew Jesus was real, living, and my friend. More importantly, I knew I was loved and I found a place I belonged, right in Jesus’ arms.

Later in my new life, I learned it was not by my efforts that I found Jesus. He was wooing me all that time that I was going the wrong way. He never let go. Now that is true love. “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19 NIV).

I Love You, Daddy

By Marcus Smith –

“I love you, Daddy.”

Four whispered words followed by two slender arms and one too-tight squeeze. As a father of three daughters, I have heard many an “I love you,” and can never hear those words enough. Whether at night time tuck-in or after receiving a yes, children are quick to let their parents know that they love them. But when my daughter slipped up to me without warning and circled me in her young arms, it was the first time she had expressed love for me, with an adult’s mind, for no special reason.

Like all my girls, she is the definition of precociousness. She can quote me as if Bartlett had devoted a chapter to me in one of his famous Quotations books, and God help me if I am inconsistent in word or action.

A keen observer, she is a skillful pundit whose humor illuminates the issues and foibles she sees around her. And I am poignantly aware that she has seen all that would be required for anyone to judge me—imperfect.

Yet she chose. She chose to love me.

God blessed me with a family of girls and their love moves me to a humble thankfulness that I can experience the kind of absolute love that they give me. Their chosen love makes my joy complete. My girls are among the most precious of my life’s reward.

“Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward” (Psalm 127:3).

When I think about God and His love, I think first of the cross.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

However, God does more than loving His creation. God is love. From the first moment of creation, until the final curtain of this age, God is the ultimate creator and thus source of all love.

“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:8).

Growing up, I learned that because God is self-sufficient He does not need anything, including our love. As a child it seemed strange to me that we loved a God who did not need to love us back. So I questioned whether God could actually love me personally like my parents could. After all, if God did not need me, how could He love me?

In Acts, Paul debated with philosophers who believed that God needed the world. Paul argued that God created the world and is, “not served by human hands, as though he needed anything” (Acts 17:25). For Paul, since God is the source of all creation, He cannot have unmet needs. So why did God create humans He did not need and who would cause Him grief with their sin?

The Bible teaches us that God did not create the world because He had to. Rather, out of His infinite love, He chose to create and love His creation. As I take joy from my children’s love for me, God experiences our love when we chose to love him through praise and worship, and He feels joy (Ps. 44:3 Prov. 15:8).

God desires worship, not because He needs our love, but because, like a parent, He wants our love.

I could have not had children, but then I would miss both the joy of experiencing their love, and the joy of loving them. As my daughter chose to love me, so we must chose to love the God who created us.

True love is chosen love.

Stinky Soul Condition

By Elaine James –

I walked past the bathroom and smelled Lysol spray in the air. Oh boy. Someone just used the bathroom and stunk up the joint. It’s never pleasant. But thank goodness for the spray to give a mist and erase the odor.

When my daughter had the flu, I used that same spray as my arsenal to attack those germs on anything she touched. My family began to beg me to stop spraying, screaming “Mom, the spray is going to make us sick before the flu does.”

I often do things that stink up the atmosphere. I said something I should not have to my friend. I watch TV shows and movies that probably stink up my mind. I even wore a pair of shoes recently that I did not like and I took them back. I am tempted and my decisions are not always clean. I wish I could have had a magical can of spray to get rid of that odor when I screw up and feel condemned. I’m not perfect. No magic spray for this stinky soul condition.

I have been reading about the life of Abraham and Sarah. Sarah, out of impatience to have a child with Abraham, gave her maidservant to her husband so she could carry the baby. She later felt guilty, but made things worse by mistreating that maidservant, Hagar, while she was pregnant.

That decision still bears consequences to this day, as the entire region that came from their son, Ishmael, remains in unrest.

Still, God was patient with Abraham and Sarah’s impatience, and chose to accredit them with righteousness.

I identify with Abraham and Sarah. I can be impatient, quick-tempered, striving, doubting, worried and lacking peace. Just plain old stinky!

But Abraham and Sarah held their own son, Isaac, in the end and laughed. Their journey was filled with some odor yet the fresh scent of God’s spray (which was His promise) refreshed them and gave them joy. He loved them no matter what.

As I completed their story, I had a fresh spray of perspective. Just as Lysol works on eliminating nasty germs and odors, God sanitizes me and cleans up my mess. With both, I receive a fresh start and have renewed confidence.

PRAYER: God I know I stink up life at times. Thank You for Your covenant with me. Your word is truth. Help me to be refreshed by it. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

“When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers” (Genesis 17:1-2 NIV).

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