Melted Sugar

Okay, time for some fun. I’m calling this entry “Cooking 101 with Jesus.”

Yesterday, the Lord gave me a picture of His kitchen. He had two pots on the stove. One held butter, the other sugar. We were making No-Bake Cookies. Yum!!! He brought the flame under the sugar pot to a steady flicker. (We’re dealing with the gas stove of the Holy Spirit here; ie, Romans 12:11, II Timothy 1:6.) J

The butter the Lord said represented the respect we give one another as fellow believers. Our respect for the work of the Holy Spirit melts our hearts and keeps us soft and sensitive, responding to His grace and power at work in our lives through the ministry of the Church.

The sugar He said represented His love, the extravagant sweetness He places in our lives that make our cookies (the deeds we do for His Kingdom) so scrumptious!

To my curiosity, the burner under the pot of butter began to act up. The flame shot high, burning too fast, then too low, leaving the butter cold. The Holy Spirit said, “Place the butter with the sugar, so they are in one pot.” Respect and love work best when melted together. A good illustration of this is the reciprocation between spouses (Ephesians 5:21-33). Another is submission within a body of believers, where we respect one another’s free will and individual choices yet remain united through the love of the Spirit poured into our hearts (Romans 15:1-2; Philippians 2:1-2).

Then Jesus did something that shocked me. After I combined the two ingredients in one pot, He took the five-pound bag of sugar on the counter and dumped the whole thing into the pot. The sugar filled the pot and overflowed, making a mess all over the stove and floor. I stared. Was it an accident?

Jesus smiled. “My love is extravagant.”

I studied the mess and decided that if Jesus had that much love to give, I needed to get a bigger pot. So I switched the pot for a big kettle, but Jesus just can’t be outdone. He walked in with a twenty-pound bag of sugar, hefted it onto His shoulder, and poured…and poured…and poured.

Laughter bubbled up. “Jesus, You win! No matter how big the pot I find, Your love overflows the brim.” I sat cross-legged in the mountains of sugar on the floor and gazed up with a smile brimful of delighted adoration. “So what am I supposed to do?”

He smiled. “Cook. And let the little children dip their fingers in the sugar that has overflowed the pot. My love cannot be restricted to boundaries. I give My Spirit without measure.” (Luke 6:38, John 3:34)

Eugene Peterson expresses it this way in the Message Bible: “Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.” (Ephesians 5:2)

Jesus isn’t interested in measuring cups or the human boundaries we set on loving people. He said, “Melt the sugar in the pot and get more butter. Make an even bigger batch.” What we do for others, we do for Him (Matthew 25:40). He desires the condition of our hearts and souls to be incredibly soft and pliable—more than pliable, liquid gold—for Him to pour out His love, and even our lives, in any fashion He desires (I Thessalonians 2:8, II Timothy 4:6).

Yet, even as melted butter and sugar are not easy for anyone to handle except the Lord—they’re too hot and drip all over the place—so the Lord adds our humanity to the mix of our melted hearts, allowing others to "handle" us in the interface of common, everyday life. Our humanity is like the oatmeal flakes added to the No-Bake Cookies recipe. Once the ingredients set up with the oatmeal, anyone can pick them up and “taste and see” the work and love of God in our lives—prayerfully and hopefully experiencing it in a fresh, mouth-watering way, exclaiming with delight, “The Lord is good!” (Psalm 34:8)

PS. We often here of the "milk of human kindness" and people's personalities are sometimes referred to in terms of "chocolate" or "vanilla". It seems fitting that in this recipe of loving others that friendship and personality get melted into the mix!

Freedom

Jesus, Jesus,

There’s a playground built up in my mind

All the free rides a girl could want.

Except there’s chains attached and I feel the weight upon my soul.

The devil lies and says the price is paid

For every ride I take.

But a lifelong pass to self-indulgence,

shreds my joy and robs my faith--

stealing everything that's You.

It's sad to say the playground's here

When You've torn it down before.

The lures, the taunts, the whispered lies,

The counterfeit image waltzing like grace.

Addictions don’t stop with stronger resistance,

Not when the playground music’s still playing.

You come with a sledgehammer

to smash up those rides.

But it’s my mind and I get to choose.

Grace traded in for a license to sin.

Oh, God, did I do it again?

“You’re part of Me,” You say and swing that hammer high.

“My lovely bride; I want you pure and without blame.”

Oh, Jesus, I choose: I relinquish all hold

On masquerades that only poison the soul.

So shatter these thoughts, the proud imaginations of my heart.

Replace with good the ugliness, and take me in Your arms again.

"So since we’re out from under the old tyranny [of the law], does that mean we can live any old way we want? Since we’re free in the freedom of God, can we do anything that comes to mind? Hardly. You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it’s your last free act. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits."  Romans 6:15-17, The Message Bible (brackets mine)

Paid in Full

Paid in Full.

Jesus stamped these words on our past: on every mistake, every sin, every riotous thought that hasn’t honored Him. He stamped the words, inked with blood-red stain, on every wrong conception and misperception we have about Him, ourselves, each other, and this world.  It’s not just that He cancelled our debt from back then, but that He continues to pay the debts we incur every time those misperceptions hurt us or wound others.

It’s like going to a doctor for wounds inflicted by jealousy, fear, anger, or even unintentional prejudice—just to name a few of the ways a soul gets wounded. The Doctor removes the bandages that friends carefully applied, anoints the injuries with healing oil, and prescribes antibiotics for infection. Then at the clerk’s counter, the bill gets totaled. XXX amount for the doctor’s expertise; XXX for the medical supplies. Responsible, we write a check to pay the bill even as our hearts pinch with our pocketbooks because the check represents more than money. Each check means trying to do better next time, keeping more rules and all their fine print, and walking on egg-shells to keep from offense. It’s all the stuff Paul tells us in Galatians that the Law demands for right-standing with God. Such a high price for basic health care. But we need soul-provision, and the Holy Spirit is the only soul-physician around.

Then as the weight of our future failures fall heavily upon us, stooping our shoulders and bowing our heads, in walks the CEO of the medical center, the top Executive who pays the salaries of all the people on hHs staff and who owns the building with all its specialized equipment.  But He’s more than the CEO: He’s the Man we’re dating; the Man absolutely in love with every single one of us.

He takes the check we wrote—the payment that comes from bruised pieces of our hearts—tears it into tiny pieces and smiles at the clerk. “I’m covering this account. Every expense accrued on it in the past and from this day forward is paid in full. By Me.”

And it’s just that simple.

We need the Great Physician’s loving care, the generous oil of the Holy Spirit provided through the ministry of His church, and the merciful grace of family and friends. We’ll need these gifts every day of our lives, and we’ll need to give them out as lavishly as we’ve received them. The cost is more than we can ever afford to pay, but our heavenly account already holds our Bridegroom’s sprawling signature with the beautiful words, our guarantee: Paid in Full—For All Eternity.

Paul, former pharisee and appointed apostle, says it this way: "I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn't work. So I quit being a 'law man' so that I could be God's man. Christ's life showed me how and enabled me to do it." (Galations 2:19, The Message Bible)

And just in case we still don't get it, Paul presses home the point: "The obvious impossibility of carrying out such a moral program [of rule-keeping] should make it plain that no one can sustain a relationship with God that way. The person who lives in right relationship with God does it by embracing what God arranges for him." (Galations 3:11, The Message Bible; brackets mine)

And by the way, the CEO, the One we’re courting, He has alot of titles, alot of names. Most of us known Him best as Jesus.