Recipe for Life

Today I heard a line where a character said, "I wish there was a cookbook for life, full of recipes on how to live life."

I love cookbooks! I have a shelf full of them. Ones that have a wide variety of recipes while others are specialized on a specific type of food-low fat, cupcakes, or southern-just to name a few.

When you find a certain recipe that you want to make you have to follow specific steps. You have to be sure that you have the ingredients and then you follow the steps by adding the right amounts and mixing and cooking it or refrigerating it. A lot of times if you substitute something it won't taste the same or if you put too much of an ingredient in, it sometimes spoils the taste.

Well, there is a "cookbook" for life-it is the Bible. God gives it to us and tells us how we can live a successful life. If we follow the "recipes" He gives us you will have success. You may be saying 'I don't understand what you are saying.' Let me give you a couple of examples.

Proverbs 22:6

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. "

Joshua 1:8

"This Book of the Law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein. For then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success."

If we follow His plan then we know that God is in control and the results will be what He has planned for us.

There are also plenty of examples in the Bible of what happened to people who didn't follow the "recipe" that God had given them. The one that stands out in my mind is Jonah. God told him to go to Nineveh and preach but he went his own way and ended up in a whale's belly before he acknowledged his decisions and changed his ways. As we live one day at a time then we need to be willing to read God's Bible and follow His recipes so that we can get the intended results. You can find relevant topics in His Word that include: marriage, soul winning, parenting, vocations, and everyday living. This "cookbook" should be on your shelf and it should be as "worn" out as your favorite cookbook. You should have verses memorized and pages should be creased and marked. I know my favorite recipes by heart and there are my favorite verses that I have memorized as well. They are the most important "recipes" that I will ever need.