It was early afternoon when I arrived back in the office planning on accomplishing some paperwork. As I was setting up my place to work, the urge for a fresh, warm cookie hit me. Part of the marketing strategy of our company is to provide freshly baked cookies for our referral sources, so, we have an oven in the kitchen and tons of frozen cookie batter in the freezer. A recipe for bliss….if you want a great cookie.
Hey, I'm a rational guy and I usually can come up with a workable plan to accomplish my goals in mind. I knew that our frozen cookies required heat to cook, and I also knew that our microwave produced heat for cooking. So, equipped with my deductive reasoning and ample ability to place frozen cookies on a plate, I placed two of them in the microwave and pushed the appropriate button to produce the much needed heat. I carefully watched the process as the microwave came alive with energy and lazily turned the plate in a circular motion. Waiting hungrily for the desired results, my eyes stayed focused on the cookies as they traveled their appointed path.
Unexpectedly, a spiral of smoke began to rise from one of the cookies, and I sprang into action while the other cookie began to follow the first one’s example. I immediately pushed the button to stop the cooking process of the microwave and to open its door. When I did that, what was now a lot of smoke and bad smell poured generously out of the microwave. The cookie dough had a glazed-over-plastic-goo-sort-of-look as it had apparently tried to morph into something other than what it was created to be.
I quickly grabbed the paper plate of smoking, charred goo and ran to the back door looking to get it outside as quickly as possible.
The smell was expressing itself impressively. I would have rated it at about 8 out of 10 easily. It really was awful….. and it quickly spread everywhere as bad smells often do. Part of its agenda was to broadcast my grossly mis-led journey in cookie baking.
While I was busily opening the doors to air out the office, I was receiving a lot of lighthearted grief from the staff about my adventure with the cookies. Our office manager was slightly shocked and stunned beyond words. She came by my office and just said, "Really? Really?” I took it that she was not impressed with my cooking skills.
At this particular moment my brain went on the blink as I offered up the best excuse that presented itself. “Hey, apparently there is a reason that I am field staff and usually kept away from the office!” I think that in the universe of lame excuses, something of a new record was reached right then. I may someday even get a “lame excuse” award for that one……
Later that day, I received a text from our office manager that read something like this, “Maybe U can get some cooking lessons from your wife this evening!” When my wife saw the text and heard my story later, she just shook her head and laughed……
My ego was not having a good day.
As I thought about this short, failed adventure in my life, I envisioned many parallels as to how we all sometimes approach living. We think of some really great ideas and then pursue them using all of our reasoning, reckoning, and experience in order to accomplish those good goals. We take all of the skills and decision making processes within us and bring them online as we approach the many challenges we all face daily. However, our troubles really begin when we ignore the directions already laid out for us in the Bible. It is then that we are just planning for failure.
Sadly, way too many times, the results we come up with resemble my nuclear cookies; smoldering, smoking, and toxic looking. We generate a mess and smell that screws up our lives and is awfully embarrassing to us, and, way too often, people who wind up this way already know the right way to do things….by the Bible…..but they choose to ignore it.
You see, I had it all rationally figured out, but in reality, I was wrong about how to bake cookies. I'm afraid that this concept is also what goes on when we rely on our own intelligence to make it in life. Many times I have counseled with people who thought they had it all figured out. Sadly, they were trying to exist in the middle of a toxic mess in their lives that was brought about by following their own ways.
Understand this, there are no “undo” buttons in life so that we can restart our marriages or raise our kids again. There are no “delete” buttons in order to erase hurtful words or acts that we have done. And yet, even while in the middle of our messes, the Lord still gives us instructions as to how to deal with our situations when we do find ourselves in trouble.
Read these Bible verses and understand the Lord’s heart toward you:
Jeremiah 29:11-13 NIV
11 For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
12 Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.
13 You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.
When we find ourselves dealing with a mess, we need to seek Him with all our hearts…….so that we can find Him and His plans for us.
Another one of my favorite scriptures challenges me to not rely on my own intelligence to run my life. The idea here is, if I do rely on myself and my resources, then I would be settling for something much less that what I could have had.
Look at this:
Proverbs 3:5-6 GNB
5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart. Never rely on what you think you know.
6 Remember the LORD in everything you do, and he will show you the right way.
The implication here is that my own understanding brings about a result that is much less desirable than what I would really like or want……. We might refer to it as what is viewed as “the wrong way”. However, in this verse the Lord’s intent appears to be to show us “the right way”. What could be better than that?
In my cookie adventure, I still had cookies at the end, but they were burned, scary looking, and not fit to be eaten.
Who wants to settle for less?
Who wants to settle for failure?
Who really wants to settle for toxic waste cookies?
Consider these other verses also:
Isaiah 55:8-9 NIV
8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD.
9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
God has such a wonderful plan for our lives for now and in the future, but we have to adjust our thinking to His ideas. We cannot expect God to change His thinking to our ways……not gonna happen.
About right here most of us think of an obvious question: “If God’s plan is so good, then why am I still so miserable?
Maybe examining where your decisions come from might provide an answer……
However, I think we should go even deeper. What about when you have followed the Lord the best way that you can, made all the right decisions, and things still are all screwed up feeling? What then?
This is when we have the opportunity to approach things by trusting God. (That is what faith is, by the way.) Through faith we can claim His peace. When Jesus was approaching leaving the earth to go back to the Father, He said that He would leave His peace with His children on the earth.
I have to believe this and “mentally own it” for myself. Giving up my expectations, plans, desires, and self will……..
I need to become willing to trust the plan that He has in His will for me, even if it all continues to be screwed up for a while. He never said that those plans would all be comfortable or all go easily.
Some of our biggest challenges come in all this as we face the choices of being willing to ask Him for His plan and then for us being willing to genuinely follow it. When we are really honest with ourselves, we have to acknowledge the fact that we don't always know all that there is to being successful in life. The truth is, most of the time we don’t.
Of course the thought pops up in our mind, “Well then, all I need to do is just make all the right decisions in my life, then I won’t have to worry about making a mistake!” This is a great concept and goal, but how am I to know which decisions are the right ones? Only the Lord knows, and He wants very much to let us in on the knowledge of it. The Lord definitely wants to share with us His best for us, but we have to at least talk with Him and listen to Him.
It is interesting that someone would say, “Hey, I know all this stuff you are talking about!” I'm sure they that they know these things very well, but then they still go ahead and try to do it their own intelligent, figured out way. How wacked is that?
I guess that I should stop right here and reluctantly confess something to you. I really have baked cookies properly at the office in the past. I used the proper oven, followed the instructions and had them turn out very well. It is just that this time I decided to ignore what I knew to be right and try it my newly devised way. The result was not a pretty sight, and I was not the only one affected by my poor choice. Everyone in the office suffered in some way because of my ill conceived, selfish plan.
My decision that day may not have been too bad just to destroy two lumps of cookie dough, but what about when it involves negatively affecting your children, or church, or friends, or your spouse?
A nuclear mess you don't want in any of these cases.
In The Old Testament, the Lord gave some assurances to His children that I believe we can also apply to His children now. Listen to what the Lord says to us:
Isaiah 30:18 & 21 NIV
18 Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!
…………………
21 Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it."
This is a sweet, metaphorical way of the Lord telling us that He will guide us as we listen to Him.
Let me encourage you; have a good talk with the Lord about what it will take for your life to be a great success in all areas of it. He really does want you to be successful and He loves you so much.
Avoid the nuclear mess in your life……….. It's the only one you have on this earth.
Love,
Dan
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