The Recipe

 "For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness, and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." 2 Peter 1: 5-8

    My great nephew, Mason, and I love to bake and we always follow the same recipe for chocolate chip cookies. I have made these so many times, the recipe is etched in my memory. While mixing the ingredients, Mason wondered if the vanilla extract would take good by itself. "There's only one way to find out," I replied, handing him a spoon.

    Sampling it, he began to sputter and spit as he sought water to rinse the offense. As we continued our sweet endeavor, he wondered if shortening would reflect the frosting-like appearance in taste, but, at my advice, he wisely chose not to sample this. After some silent reflection, he spoke: "How can ingredients that taste awful by themselves produce such good cookies?" Yet, they all have to be included in the batter or our cookies will suffer.

    Just as there are eight ingredients in our recipe, there are eight qualities we must stir into our faith if we are to produce a successful outcome. Once a sinner is saved by grace, if he just sits there idly enjoying his gift, it's like trying to create cookies from flour alone. To grow in our faith, we must keep working at it - not working for our salvation; that work was done by Christ alone on Calvary. Rather, we stir in goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, mutual affection and love. These are all ingredients our Savior possessed; if we are to taste like Him, we must follow the recipe.

"For if you do these things, you will never stumble, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." 2 Peter 1: 10, 11