BLESSED IN FOLLOWING GOD'S RECIPE FOR YOUR LIFE
The COU COU expedition came off well yesterday. Just dying with laughter at the various remarks!!!!
Was impressed to connect one cou experience with another and then to make a spiritual application.
God has a recipe for our lives and that recipe is spelt out throughout the Bible in various texts. When they are all connected up they help you to appreciate that God is a strategic planner and that in the life of the child of God, nothing happens by chance. in fact, in another by book by C.B Haynes the writer of the book 'God Sent a Man', has a chapter entitled A Life In Which Nothings Goes Wrong. That chapter is sooo deep.
Though we like to say that ALL things work together for good, it is another story for some folk when the rubber meets the road. Notably the caveat in that text is ..."to those who love God". So all things do not work together for the good of some folk because they have not really met God as yet and therefore cannot love Him. Hence, they have a very negative response to the vicissitudes of life. They do not understand the recipe concept.
The metaphor of the recipe allows us to better understand that to create the end product, let's say a for a macaroni and cheese pie,( Bajans love that ) for example, you need to put together a number of ingredients. It is the combination of the ingredients in the correct proportions that enables the dish to come out well.
When it comes to our lives now, God the Master Chef, writes the recipe for our lives even before we were born. No, it is not fate!! He would never design for someone to be a criminal or to overdose in a brothel and end up in a life threatening situation.
That he does write a recipe in the cookbook of our lives is revealed in Psalm 139:16 &17 AMP
“Your eyes saw my unformed substance, and in Your book all the days [of my life] were written before ever they took shape, when as yet there was none of them. How precious and weighty also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! [Ps. 40:5.]”
Jeremiah 29:11 is very popular with many of us. It would be good to consider the context of that promise. Though God writes a recipe, which is His perfect plan for us, we can deviate from that recipe by the choices we make in life.
In the unpublished manuscript in one of the Prayer Letters # 52 entitled Disaster or Design written in 2009, I described my experience with making cou cou for the very first time. That episode came to mind yesterday as I prepared to make some for Andy.
So let me take you back to that unforgettable experience:
Extracted from Prayer Letter # 52 Disaster or Design 2009
"Let’s see, where shall we start? Maybe, I should begin with the metaphorical idea of God’s recipe for our lives. All of the ingredients to bring us to the final product may not be appear desirable. However, when they all are all mixed together, the result can be quite palatable. Romans 8:28 is about God’s recipe. This adventure has been about me following God’s recipe for my life. It is only as we follow God’s recipe that we can have the final product that God intends. It is when we deviate from His instructions that we find ourselves in difficulties with which He did not intend for us to grapple.
How can I forget when I failed to follow a recipe I had been given to make cou-cou? Flying fish and cou-cou is considered as our national dish. Most Barbadian women therefore pride themselves on being able to ‘turn a good cou cou.’ I was not to be left out. I wanted to ‘try my hand’ and surprise my husband, who had never known me to make cou-cou. His mother was an excellent cou-cou maker so we frequently benefited from her culinary skills.
On that memorable day, I joyfully turned my cou- cou and it looked good. I wanted it to be very creamy, you know, mellow and smooth, just like my mother-in-law’s. I followed the instructions given, well….. for the most part. But I decided to add more and more of the okra water to increase the cou-cou’s mellowness. I had the flasks ready into which I would place the cou cou. Andy would have it nice and hot when he arrived at home. Mummy Estwick’s cou cou always came out in a nice symmetrical ball which gently tumbled out of the flask. While putting the cou-cou into the flask, I momentarily pondered its slightly soft consistency. However, I felt that in the flask it would more or less congeal.
The moment arrived. I did not tell Andy what a wonderful meal awaited him. I wanted to see his eyes twinkle with surprise and pleasure. I remember that evening very vividly. For some reason there was a little gathering around the table. The children looked on, eagerly like me, to see Daddy’s face. Taking up the flask, Andy removed the cover and tilted it.
Much to my consternation, yeah horror, instead of a well-rounded symmetrical balI of cou cou, what gushed forth was a thick, lava type substance which galloped madly to the plate’s edge. Maybe, it was its viscous nature which prevented the contents from cascading on to the table’s surface. There was a momentary silence as we gaped at the flattened mushy spectacle which bore very remote resemblance to what Mummy Estwick produced!
Suppressed tittering eventually gave way to unrestrained outbursts of belly aching laughter. Andy surveyed the cooled lava and decided that it was not edible. Not even for the cat. We turned my mangled sloshy efforts into the bin. Enough for surprises and ironic twists! There was an encore however which did not end disastrously, as I followed the recipe more carefully. When we stick to God’s recipe for our lives, I think we can get some wonderful surprises. I expect that when God turns me out, I will not be a disaster!"
Genesis 50:20 But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.That Prayer Letter Disaster from which the extract came is one of my favourites and I added on the comments of three young persons who read it and spontaneously responded. I am tempted to post it on the blog. Instead I will send it to anyone interested in getting a jump start on reading the next book. It would be better sent to an email address but I could message it as well.
Blessings!! Stick to God's recipe. The soothsayers and naysayers did not write your life plan, God did and though folk may think " evil" against you, God can make all things work together for your good!