(This is a real recipe, so enjoy the spiritual and natural food.)

Ingredients:
Bowl……………………………………………..Church
Spoon.............Gospel

1 lb Butter softened..............Prayer

3 cups Sugar…………….Charity

6 Eggs……………………………Love
4 cups Flour……………………….…….Truth
¾ cup Milk…………………………Kindness
1tsp  almond/vanilla extract….....…Hope
Pan……………………………Grace
Oven…………………………….Spirit
Icing/Glaze…………………………Salvation

Directions:
1. In the bowl (church) with the spoon (gospel) Cream together sugar and butter (charity and prayer). Within the church, where the gospel is being used, we must stir up all our gifts and make sure we add charity and prayer first. Charity brings tolerance, empathy and understanding.  When we have charity, tolerance, and compassion, we accept people where they are. That means we remember that someone extended a hand up to us, propelling and compelling us to do the same. The compassion we extend will lead us to pray and intercede on one another’s behalf, believing and trusting God through our prayers to strengthen, keep, and meet the need. I have said it in the past and will say it again, with lovingkindness He has drawn us and with that same lovingkindness we will draw others. (Jeremiah 31:3)

2. Add eggs (love) one at a time, beating well after each addition. Isn’t it something how the more we stand on God’s love and His word, the more it seems we are beaten down for taking that stance? God wants us to be beaten well, to be tried as His son was tried. In order to reign with Him we must suffer with Him. If we endure, we will also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He also will deny us. (2 Timothy 2:12)

3. Add flour (truth) and milk (kindness) alternately to creamed mixture, beating well after each addition. The word of God tells us that God is a spirit, and they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. (John 4:24) Speaking and living truth will also cause us to be beaten, but don’t become defeated. The word says rejoice, and be exceeding glad for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. We spend so much time trying to put on a front for people making them think we are this awesome instrument of God, but when we are away from their eyes we are doing whatever pleases our flesh. Our conversation with the church folk is of Godly reverence, but in other situations–around other people–what comes out of our mouths and what’s in our thoughts will send us on a fast road to hell. What amazes me, though, are the excuses we use. “God knows my heart”; “I’m a work in progress.”

Let me break this down for you. Yes God knows our heart; he knows that the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9) And please explain how you are a work in progress when you keep regressing. God also knows if you are being kind for a show or if you are being genuinely kind. The world will help someone knowing they are going to get what they have given back in return but a Christian gives and does what needs to be done not expecting to receive a thing. We are only blessed to be a blessing:  Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. (2 Corinthians 9:7)

4. Stir in flavorings (hope). Mix well. The songwriter says it best: “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name. On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand; all other ground is sinking sand.” Tell yourself there is more than this.

5. Pour batter into greased and floured 10 degree tube pan (grace). Bake at 300 degrees for 1 hour and 40 minutes. Invert pan to cool. It is time to pour the batter into the pan. God’s grace holds and keeps our unfinished product until we surrender it to him to be converted. His grace, simply put, doesn’t kill us while we are in our mess. When a conversion takes place in our lives God turns the heat up to transform us into the instrument, product, and vessel He wants us to be. We are going to be in the fire–there is no getting around that fact. Fire is a mandate to burn off our impurities so that when God looks at us He sees His image in us. Without enduring the heat for the allotted time God says our battered lives will remain just that: a beat-up, torn-apart, sin-wrecked battered mess.

Fire, however, doesn’t just purify us; it can and will also destroy our enemies. Psalm 97:3 says fire goes before him and burns up his adversaries all around. Stand in your fire knowing this, that the t testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:3-4)

6. Drizzle the glaze (salvation) on top of the cake. Once we have been converted we begin to walk this life of salvation applying God’s word in and over our life so we can resist the temptations of this world. No, we are not going to always dot our I’s and cross our T’s, but you can say I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)