First we Prepare
Before you bake you want to prepare by finding all of your ingredients, getting the bowls and utensils ready, and preheating the oven.
If you don’t prepare beforehand then you are setting yourself up for failure – you realize you didn’t have all the ingredients, half your tools are dirty or missing, and the oven is taking too long to heat up.
Preparing for life is not much different than preparing to cook.
The ingredients are relatable to the people that we have in our life. Just like how an egg can be used and prepared in many ways to produce many great things – people in our life can be for many purposes that produce many differing results.
Whether we are spreading the word, reinforcing faith, or learning from others – each person has a purpose in our life.
Then we Assemble
After you prepare your ingredients you of course need to assemble them. Often the process of assembling baking ingredients is specific and exact with little to no room for error.
Whip the egg, add the milk, then the sugar and finally the flour and baking powder which needs to be mixed together separately before adding to the main mixture.
If you do it in the wrong order you may end up with clumps or the wrong texture or worse.
Assembling ingredients is much like putting the people in our lives towards what they are most suited for. We need to preach to the sick and spiritually lost, righteously judge those inside the church and most important we need to love both groups equally just like Jesus Christ does.
Don’t find yourself judging those outside of the church because that is not our job as Christians – it is God’s job.
Love both groups, believers and non-believers, equally, because Jesus Christ loves all people and calls you to do the same. Biblical love is not easy to give fully because of the cultural practices we find ourselves surrounded with but we will find that even an effort produces great fruit’s of labor for everybody involved.
When properly assembled into the most suited purpose – the people around us will grow and improve at the same time we do in a mutually beneficial relationship.
And Finally it’s Into the Oven
After we have our ingredients all assembled and put the mixture into the baking dish, we stick it in the oven and we wait exactly how long we’re told to in order to get the best result.
How does this correlate to Christian life?
We need to be patient when it comes to ourselves and the people around us. Wait until the time is right to tell them what they did was wrong or to preach an important verse to them.
If we try to push our agenda on them too early we risk pushing them farther away from both us and God, which produces nothing good for either party.
Think of it like taking putting the baking dish in the oven before the oven is pre-heated – it won’t bake properly and will come out less than perfect.
Patience and love produce an abundance of fruitfulness and that is truly a goal worth aiming for.
So the next time you are going through your daily routine – think about what sort of baking you are doing in your life and whether or not you’re doing it the best way you can.
