GOOD VITTLES

I like to cook. So the other day I decided to bake some bread, for I reasoned; how hard can it be.

Based on what I have heard all you need is some flour and stuff and a stove. I started to look up a recipe but then decided I didn’t need to for I cook all the time. I put in some flour and some water (I didn’t have any milk) mixed it up and whacked it a few times and put it a bread pan and then turned on the stove.

I felt pretty good about the whole thing because I love fresh hot baked bread.

Some time later I began to smell the bread baking, but it didn’t smell right. I figured it just needed cooking awhile longer so after about an hour and a half I decided it was long enough. My bread didn’t look right, it was no bigger than when I put it in the stove; in fact it looked smaller.

About this time some friends came over and I asked them if they would like some fresh hot bread and most of them said sure, with lots of butter. I sat some plates around and brought out the hot bread and to my surprise their faces changed, and one by one they decided they weren’t hungry.

Soon after they left, and I wondered if I had left out a necessary ingredient, so I got down a recipe book, and looked up bread making. To my surprise I had left out several things that should have been in there.

Besides flour I should have used; salt, sugar, milk, oil and yeast. All these ingredients had to be used in the proper amounts and mixed well.

I thought there must be some spiritual application for this mess I made. It wasn’t the mess that bothered me for that was about the norm for me, but I had involved some of my friends, and they had nicely rejected my feast.

Then I remembered that these friends had not responded to my testimony for Christ either, they were friendly, and we had some fun times together, but they had no interest in my recipe for Christian living. Then it hit me, perhaps I have left out some of the key ingredients of Christianity.

Since I still had my bread in mind, and I knew the Bible speaks of salt. For Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth but if the salt has lost its savor it is worthless.” That brought to the point that maybe my saltiness has played out and that is part of the reason for my ineffectiveness.

Then the issue of the sugar popped up maybe my sugar is no longer sweet, but has turned to sourness. Continuing on, could it be that my milk of human kindness is just a façade?

Now this is one of the most important missing parts of my Christian life, and that is the oil, which throughout the scripture represents the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in and through me. Everything that is manifested in and through me is his work.

The last thing is the yeast. Yeast or leaven is a type of sin, and leaven will permeate the whole of the being. While those ingredients properly used in concert with one another will make good bread the recipe for a good Christian testimony will have to leave off the yeast part and make sure you use plenty of the others.