What is your recipe for life?

I was a culinary teacher once. 

I wanted to teach my students how to covert recipes.  

I found a recipe in a notebook for chocolate chip cookies that already had a column on both sides of the recipe for converting purposes.  

The recipe on the paper made 3 dozen cookies so I wanted my students to convert the recipe down to 1 1/2 dozen and then up to 6 dozen as we were going to bake them on Friday for an event on Saturday.  

We baked over 150 cookies.  

I noticed after the first batch we made that they did not seem to settle flat after cooked.  

We rolled them up into balls (like you do for chocolate chip cookies), placed them on the pan, baked for 8 minutes, let them cool. 

But for some reason they stayed in the shape of balls.  

They also tasted a little bit sweet and a little bit salty.  

I couldn't figure out what I did wrong?  

I asked a former culinary teacher what the problem could be  

She looked over the recipe and said, "this was just a recipe we used to practice conversion...it's not actually a recipe at all!" 

Are you walking through life and something doesn't taste right?  

Maybe it is because you are following no recipe at all or someone else's recipe.

When you reach a certain age in life, you start to get a distaste in your mouth for things.

This happened to me when I was around 13 or 14 years old. I got a distaste for going to church. 

Looking back, I believe I got that distaste because I was trying to follow someone else's recipe. 

I thought I knew God. I thought I had a testimony.  

Little did I know at the time, I did not. 

Even though I was baptized at age 8, what I was catching from the church was that in order to be a good Christian I had to follow the rules. 

Well, I've never wanted to be a rule follower and as I got older, it got worse. 

Eventually after running as far away from God as I could, I realized that some of those rules I was taught had value. 

I now value staying away from certain things because I tried them and all those things did was bring me pain, guilt, and shame. 

Notice I didn't say that I value staying away from those things because God said so. No, that is not helpful. Just like it is not helpful for my mom or dad to say to me, "don't do that because I said so."  

I wish that I would have learned earlier on to trust God's voice. I wish that I would have learned earlier on that I have freedom in Christ to do whatever I want to do, but that doesn't mean it will benefit me or others. 

I wish that I would have known that when the Holy Spirit (my gut) tells me to do something or not do something I should listen, but I have to learn by my own experiences. 

I am thankful that my experiences in life have brought me to this place. I have found the recipe that works for me. It includes Jesus Christ as my savior. It includes a little bit of exercise weekly. It includes prayer daily. It includes journaling for my mental health. It includes spending time with my family. It includes helping others along the way. It includes being worthy just as I am.

Get your recipe together for you. 

Try different things. Figure out what works for you. 

God has a divine design for you! 

Once you figure it out, it will taste just right!