God's Recipe for Life

Raise your hand if you enjoy cooking or baking with your Mom. When I was a kid, I loved to bake. I remember spending lots of time in the kitchen just watching my mother, trying to learn how to prepare some of my favorite foods. My favorite thing to bake was Christmas Cookies. When I was old enough to try baking on my own, I quickly learned that the first thing I needed to do before I began was to find a good recipe. My mom had a box of recipe cards that she had collected through the years, and she also had plenty of great cookbooks.

Who can tell me why it is so important when you're baking to begin with a recipe? That's right! You have to know not only what ingredients to use, but also how much of each ingredient to use. It's important to follow a recipe exactly if you want what you're baking to come out right each time. For example, if you put too much salt in your chocolate chip cookies, they would taste bad. Likewise, if you forgot to put the chocolate chips in the cookies, you wouldn't have chocolate chip cookies!! Following the recipe if VERY important!

Did you know, boys and girls, that much like my Mom gave me a great recipe for chocolate chip cookies, God has given us a recipe for how to live our lives? That recipe is found right here in the Holy Bible. The Bible contains all the ingredients that we need to live a life full of blessings. Who wrote the recipe? GOD! Just like a baker decides which ingredients to combine for the perfect tasty treat, God has determined what we need in our lives to make our lives better.

It's important to know that God didn't write the recipe so that our lives would be boring or hard to live. Instead, God wrote His "recipe for life" to help us to know how to live happier, healthier lives. Sometimes we think that God's rules are hard to follow-maybe there are too many ingredients and we get confused about how much of each ingredient to use--but the truth is that if we follow God and follow his recipe EXACTLY, we will be GREATLY blessed.

And we are so lucky because God gave us more that just the Bible to help us understand how to live a Godly life. He also gave us a perfect living example in His Son, Jesus Christ. God sent Jesus to Earth to show us how to live and how to abide by God's rules.

God GATHERED the ingredients -- God WROTE the recipe -- God GAVE us rules - and God SENT His Son, Jesus as a living example of how to follow the rules.

Now he wants us to live our lives in the way that He intended-according to HIS perfect recipe. If we do that, we will live lives that are full of God's blessings!

Almighty God, Thank you for creating us. We are so lucky, Lord, that you have given us a recipe for life. Not only have you given us a written set of rules, but you have also given us the perfect example in Your Son, Jesus Christ. Help us, Father, to fill our lives with the perfect ingredients, to obey your commands, to follow Your recipe, to live a life like Jesus. In Jesus' precious name we pray. AMEN

FOR FUN: As an added treat, you might pass out a chocolate chip cookie to each child as they leave.