TRUSTING GOD
A Chocolate Chip Cookie Life
By Julie Ferwerda
Guest Columnist
CBN.com –
You’re not home from school thirty minutes when it hits—the pre-dinner munchies! Probably because you smell a familiar scent wafting into your bedroom—hot, gooey, chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven! Yes! Your amazing mom is making your favorite.
Dropping your homework, you race into the kitchen to see your mom, who happens to be the one who invented the recipe on the back of Tollhouse chocolate chips, pulling an ultra huge pan of steaming little delights out of the oven. You’re positive it’s going to be the best thing you’ve eaten all day, except for that delicious school cafeteria lunch earlier.
As soon as the cookies are cool enough not to cause tongue-blistering, you grab some off the cookie sheet and down them with a tall glass of cold, creamy milk. Your mom watches and waits, beyond excited that she has finally figured out a way to speak your language on this day, if only for a brief moment.
As soon as you finish gorging yourself, you look over at your mom, exhale, and finally speak up. “That butter was great! And the baking soda…simply awesome. It was really the ingredients that made this cookie taste so good, not your work making them. Who needs your cookie expertise anyway? Next time, save yourself the trouble.”
Okay, that sounds kind of far out. Not only would it not make sense, but I don’t think your mom would appreciate such rude ingratitude for all her hard work to make you your favorite tasty snack. Aside from sending you to your room “until your dad gets home,” she might take you in for a mental exam later, too. But here’s the point. This is exactly what we do to God when we take the things He has arranged and brought into our lives out of context…when we give credit to the things instead of Him—for making us happy and making our life work out.
Think about it this way. Throughout your life, you’ll have many amazing events and opportunities. Maybe you’ll get a new car, or when the time is right, you’ll fall in love with a great guy or girl, or even get a big scholarship to your first-choice college. Even most of the bad things that happen will make sense and work out for good when you see them looking back. At these times, you might be tempted to believe that those events, objects, or people that bring good into your life are the cause of your happiness—especially when it comes to falling in love. It’s tempting when you meet an incredible new love to think that he or she is the reason your life is working out—the reason you’re experiencing so much excitement. Or to think that if you don’t meet the guy or girl of your dreams, your life is ruined. But that kind of thinking is similar to the above crazy scenario. Take a look.
What is the cookie? It’s the “sweet” put-together plan that God has for your life when you love, obey, and make Him your first priority. Jeremiah 29:11 tells God’s “special recipe” for your life—good plans to give you hope and a future. When you trust Him and allow Him to mix together the right ingredients, you’ll never be disappointed because He’ll only give you His very best. In fact, His plans for you will turn out like your mom’s irresistible cookies compared to the school cafeteria food of life.
What are the ingredients? These are the individual events that, left in the capable hands of the One holding the recipe (God), will turn your life into a great tasting sweet treat according to His plans. If you fight against God’s plans for your life, living for yourself, you probably won’t even end up with cookies—maybe more like something you couldn’t identify, let alone eat, from your school lunch. The more you invite God to put your life together, the better your life will be!
What did your mom have to do with this clever illustration? Without mom, the cookie expert, there would be no sweet treats. There would be some lone ingredients growing stale in the cupboards that never got their chance to be cookies.
Without God, the One who made you and knows what will really make your life work, there would be no inspiring details coming together in the right way to make your life rich and satisfying. He is the One who does all the work and arranges all the details. He must add the right amount of this (like, an opportunity to travel to another country for a mission trip) and a little of that (say, a great Christian guy or girl to spend your life with), stir them up, put them into the oven, and take them out at just the right time. It would be really silly to give credit to things, people, or events in your life for making you happy or complete! That would be like eating just one ingredient and trying to make yourself believe it was as good as a whole cookie.
Remember that God wants to be your first love above everything else—including guys or girls and friends. He wants to put together the sweetest treat possible with your life and future, and then get the credit for it. Some of the individual ingredients He uses may not taste so great alone, but when you let Him be in charge of putting them all together, you will have the greatest cookies ever! Who would trade that for a tasteless unidentifiable school lunch?
Julie is the author of The Perfect Fit: Waiting for God’s
Best after Failed Relationships and has written articles
for other publications such as Marriage Partnership,
Brio & Beyond, HomeLife, Discipleship
Journal, and Revolve III Biblezine Project for teen
girls (Thomas Nelson). To order the book or to find
out more go to: www.JulieFerwerda.com.
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