Colby baked cookies tonight.  He opened the pack of cookie dough and dropped the little squares on the cookie sheets, put them in the oven and went downstairs to his room.  Soon after Aspen asked for a drink of juice so I went out to the kitchen and poured her a glass of orange juice.  The smell of slightly overdone cookies tickled my nose.  I opened the door to the oven, removed the cookies, and put them on a cooling rack.  Just as I finished I heard Colby running up the stairs to rescue his cookies.  They were still edible so all was not lost.  He still had more cookies to bake so he repeated the same process, once again going downstairs despite knowing that the only way to bake cookies is to do just that, bake cookies with no distractions.  Once again he raced up the stairs just a few minutes too late and removed the slightly overdone cookies from the heat of the oven. 

The cookie dough package comes with instructions.  It tells the prospective baker how long to bake the cookies and at what temperature to set the oven.  If I follow the directions my cookies will turn out perfectly.  But, if I don’t follow the directions, even if I deviate by only a few minutes the cookies will become unpalatable.  My spiritual life suffers as well when I don’t follow the directions it comes with in the Bible.  When I ignore the proper instructions,  rather than my spiritual life being a sweet cookie, I’m a little burnt and not nearly so tasty.  Just like Colby should have spent the time baking the cookies in the kitchen so he wouldn’t forget them, I need to spend time in God’s spiritual kitchen waiting for His perfect timing.

 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:10

Lead me in Your truth, and teach me; for You are the God of my salvation; on You I wait all the day long. Psalms 25:5