Baking a Cake

 

My four-year-old granddaughter and I enjoy baking together. Biscuits, cookies, and especially cakes are all likely candidates for a Saturday morning bake off in our kitchen. Gathering the ingredients, measuring out the flour, milk, eggs, and other essentials makes for some memorable moments plus a good place to start learning about fractions for Ella. It takes some time and a good measure of patience, but after the timer dings, and the cake cools, oh how it was worth the wait. 

Our walk in faith is much like baking a cake. And if that statement is true, then the Apostle Paul must have been a tax collector and a chef extraordinaire! The book of Ephesians is like a recipe book for us as we focus less on self and more on living a life that resembles the life Christ lived on this earth. Growing in Christ is a process just like baking a cake. You have to have the correct ingredients and then you have to be patient and committed to your relationship before you will actually mature and take on a resemblance to our God. 

In baking you have to be careful to follow the recipe ever so close, and we have the Betty Crocker recipe book of life in Ephesians 4 to follow as we make the transition from infancy to maturity in Christ. Gathering the ingredients and then following the step by step directions helps assure the cake is going to come out light, fluffy, and tasty! In our walk with Christ, Paul exhorts us to put off the old self and to be made new. The ingredients for this new self include being humble, gentle, patient, peaceful, and full of love. Just as baking a cake is a process that requires patience, the same is true in our faith. 

Accepting God as our Creator and Savior is the starting point in our walk of faith, from there we learn to be more like Christ by reading His word, spending time in prayer and devotion, and then choosing to live out our relationship each day that we are given to live. We walk by faith not by sight, which basically means our maturity becomes an internal growth that is lived out externally through our thoughts, words, and actions. 

Have you baked a cake lately? If not, I'd suggest it is time to get out the cake pans and mixing bowls and stir up the batter. Are you constantly working on your relationship with our Lord and Savior? In not, there is nothing that you could do today that would be more important. "Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him." Psalm 34:8.

Coach Carter