What's Cooking in Your Family?

Sometimes I’m so hungry while watching the Food Network that I can almost smell the garlic sizzling in hot butter while Giada prepares another mouth-watering creation on Everyday Italian. And ooh… wouldn’t we all love to dip our fork through the golden brown pastry top of the Barefoot Contessa’s Chicken Pot Pie?

There’s a certain chemistry to cooking that great chefs have mastered. It’s a culinary alchemy that determines which seasonings and sauces go best with poultry, and which cuts of meat are best braised while others are better roasted.

The rest of us simply learn how to follow their recipes…

But regardless of our skill, if any of us decided to neglect the recipe and the rules… if we just began to blend a chaotic mix of ingredients hoping it might turn out well in the end -- it wouldn’t. We’d end up with a dish we might feed to our garbage disposal but certainly not to our Saturday night company.

Just as following the principles of cooking is important in the kitchen, following the principles of God’s Word is important in life. Our God is a God of peace and order, not of chaos and confusion. And through His Word, He has graciously provided us with the “recipe” for a life characterized by peace and blessing.

This peaceful life comes when we
•    Prioritize spiritual disciplines such as prayer, Bible study and solitude
•    Follow God’s wisdom, rather than the wisdom of our culture
•    Believe the truth of God’s Word rather than the lies which at times come to our mind
•    Live depending on the Spirit rather than on our own strength

Trusting and obeying God’s ways and principles for living pleases Him. In fact, a life like this is the kind of sacrifice which produces a sweet smelling aroma for Him – one that we can be quite sure… is even better than the smell of Paula Deen’s Fresh Apple Cake!

“For God is not a God of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.” 1 Corinthians 14:33

(Scripture memory verse from Lesson 5 of Entrusted with a Child’s Heart)