What's Cooking?

I have quite a few cookbooks at my house. I have brought just a few of them to show you this morning. We have cookbooks on how to make just about anything you can imagine. I like to look through these cookbooks and read the recipes and think about all of the delicious foods that I could prepare. The recipes in these books tell me step by step exactly what I need to do to prepare these wonderful foods. Some of them even have a picture of what it will look like. It makes me hungry just to look at the pictures.

You might think that with all of these cookbooks that I must be a great cook, but I'm not. You see, I don't cook at all! I just read the cookbooks and look at the pictures. I can read all of the cookbooks in the world, but that won't make me a cook. To be a cook, I not only have to read the recipe, I have to actually do what it says.

The Bible is like a cookbook. The Bible has God's recipe for becoming a Christian and living a life that is pleasing to Him. A lot of people read the Bible every day. Many of them even go to Sunday School and study the Bible. But it isn't enough just to read the recipe. Reading the Bible won't make you a Christian any more than reading a cookbook will make you a cook. We must follow the recipe in our daily life.

How about you? What's cooking in your life? Do you just read the recipe, or are you using it to live a life that is pleasing to God?

Lord, help us to not only read and study your Word, but to follow its teaching to live a life that will be pleasing to you.