No Recipe Needed

I’ve made copious amounts of chocolate chip cookies during my lifetime. 

I’m not talking about hundreds, friends. It’s definitely in the thousands. 

I’ve made chocolate chip cookies so often that I no longer need the recipe. 

The way I see it, a chocolate chip cookie is appropriate to every possible social scenario. Neighborhood children needing a snack? Grieving widow feeling alone? Men working on a construction project? Women at a baby shower? Yes. Yes to all of these and anything else you can think of. A chocolate chip cookie is the answer.

In the sermon this past Sunday, my pastor (also my husband) preached about Hagar and Sarah, Ishmael and Isaac, works and grace. He said, “The slavery of our own works cannot inherit the promise of God.”

Like a good chocolate chip cookie, the Good News of salvation is appropriate to every social scenario. “It’s a cold world, and we all just need the Son,” in the trendy words of singer Josiah Queen.

I want the Gospel to have a recipe because I like to be able to check off ingredients and execute it like a master chef. I want to take the credit when it turns out well. 

Nevermind if I recite the Gospel like a worn out recipe. Nevermind if I’ve fallen into the trap of thinking that if I follow it just so, it will turn out perfectly every time. Nevermind if I boil Jesus down to some memorized words on a card that are a quick fix for any kind of ill. 

I try to serve up appetizing grace by employing my culinary works. It may work with cookies, but it doesn’t work for the Gospel. 

If “the slavery of our own works cannot inherit the promise of God,” then what is the recipe? 

Isaiah 12 shows that it is knowing Jesus.

Behold, God is my Salvation. I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my Strength and my Song, and He has become my Salvation. With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

There is no recipe for God Himself. We do not make Him. There is no recipe for water. The Lord made it, and we simply draw from His well. 

In the words of Jesus, “whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.”

No recipe needed. 

No complicated ingredients. 

No reliance on my efforts, mood, equipment, or abilities. 

Perfect every time. 

“If anyone thirsts,” Jesus says, “let him come to Me and drink.” That’s all.

In the words of Watchman Nee, “Our coming to Him was made possible by His first coming to us.”

Isaiah 12 reminds me that the promise of God doesn’t come like a recipe, but rather like water, quenching thirst for every person who forsakes their recipes to simply come to the well.