Salty Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is an interesting season of life. The kind that makes you wonder what the Lord is doing and if He is even aware of what is going on (blasphemy, I know). So I asked Him. And my mind immediately went to Chocolate Chip Cookies. Why? Great question! I didn't know at first. I started to think about the ingredients for the cookies and there filled with amazingly delicious things. Butter. Sugar. Flour. Simi-sweet chocolate chips. But then I thought about Salt and baking powder. These are key ingredients in chocolate chip cookies. Now I love cookies, with a passion that burns deep in my soul, and could eat them everyday, but I never have a hankering for a spoon full of salt or baking powder. But if those ingredients were missing form the recipe the cookies would not taste as good. The Lord is cooking something in my life and I do not know what it is. I do know it is good, because He is a good god who gifts us good things and moves with infinite love and compassion towards me. He is the master baker and I have to trust he knows the recipe and not just a recipe but the perfect recipe for this season. Although there are ingredients that taste real salty and I wonder if He has added too much, I must believe He knows what He's baking and that it will be wonderful and leave me full of wonder. The fact is that without these few things that hurt and leave me dazed and confused this new season would not be as good, these are not just flipped ingredients, but necessary ingredients and some of the most valuable. In fact in Roman times, the emperor would pay the roman soldiers in salt because it was so valuable. So instead of running or winching at these salty ingredients as a burden I should embrace them as invaluable and a gift in and of themselves.

here's to the master baker, who I trust to have the best recipes, know the right measurements of ingredients and has the perfect timing for all things.

.....looking forward to sharing the cookies with you when there done.

The Gym (aka A House of Worship)

I've been training for a Triathlon that's coming up next Saturday in the bay area. Because of this training I bought something that I never thought about buying before...a gym membership.
The gym is an interesting place, filled with interesting people...

You have the Muscle Heads, these are the guys wearing Tap Out drinking no-explode who spend more time looking in the mirror holding the weights then actually lifting them.
You have the Business man with a impressively large stomach that is solid like a cannon ball, watching CNN on screen 7. Sweating profusely on the treadmill.
You have the young determined post college girl going 90 miles an hour on the elliptical machine her ipod screaming Kelly Clarkson into her ear drums.

I find myself watching these people more then actually training for the triathlon that is lingering just around the corner. And it hit me the other day...The gym is a house of worship.

I began to hear it all around me, people are worshiping. Loud. Whether it is there own body or self image, or whether it is there husband or wife that there breaking there back to try and keep a figure that will in turn keep there spouses affection alive and well. Worshipers. Filling the house of worship called Evolutions in Tulare.

It then hit me, what am I worshiping? I sat in the back yard last night looking at the stars and asking myself, What is the object I am glorying in most? What has the most wait in my life? What am I sacrificing for? The answers that came were scary and exciting. The truth is we were all made to worship. We will worship something. Food, Self Satisfaction, Money, Power, Husbands, Wives, Kids, Sports...we will give glory to something in this life.

I’m unsatisfied with giving glory to myself, I fear rejection so I pour everything I have into making you like me, making people around me like me, Ill go to any length to make this happen. And I am unsatisfied with it.

Tozer once wrote that it all starts with a "hunger", I hear my stomach growling for more than food, affection and satisfaction in popularity. The pains of needing a true savior are kicking in. And I'm loving were it's leading.

Isaiah 40:3-5

'Listen it's the voice of someone shouting.
Clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord!
Make a straight highway through the wasteland for our God!
Fill in the valleys and level the mountains and hills.
Straighten the curves and smooth out the rough places.
Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all people will see it together.
The Lord has spoken.'