Our kitchen is the room where we gather as a family to not only share meals, but to share our hearts.  It's a time and place where we can laugh together, voice concerns, vent frustrations, or simply eat in peaceful quiet, enjoying one another's company, loving and accepting each other just as we are.

When friends drop in, it's the room we seem to gravitate to.  We sit around the kitchen table, sip a cup a tea and catch up on each other's lives.

I enjoy the times I can spend in my kitchen cooking and baking.  My recipe box is full of recipes that I have collected through the years.  Many are ones my mom and grandmas gave to me as a young bride.  After they went home to be with our Lord Jesus, I inherited many of their favorite cookbooks as well.  Pulling out those books, leafing through the pages and seeing their handwritten notes in the margins brings back so many precious memories.  In my mind's eye I can see them standing in front of their stoves or sinks, and I can almost taste and smell the aromas of their labors of love.  Whether it was baking, canning, or cooking a meal, because they loved their family and friends, they wanted everything they prepared to be the very best.

However, many of the ingredients called for in their recipes and cookbooks are no longer considered the best for us to eat.  Today most dietitians recommend that butter should be substituted with margarine. Skimmed or low-fat milk should be used instead of cream.  Egg substitutes in a carton instead of the real thing in a shell. 

Although I certainly agree that we all need to be more watchful of what we eat, and I appreciate all the research that has gone into helping us live longer, healthier lives, those substitutes don't taste the same as the "real" things! I've even tried to "finagle" the amounts that the recipe calls for (thinking maybe I could use the ingredients, just not as much).  But that made it even worse! 

Those recipes were made to be followed exactly as they were written!!

It's the same way with God and His Word. 

First of all, God wants us to make Him the heart of our "home."  He desires for us to come to Him and spend time sharing - laughing, voicing concerns, and yes, even venting our frustrations.  And how we should look forward to those times when we enter His presence in peaceful quiet, enjoying one another, knowing that He loves and accepts us just as we are!

His Word, the Bible, should be the "recipe" for our lives.  It is His labor of love.  And because He loves us, He prepared it for our very best.

Just as we need to watch our physical diet, we must be even more careful of our spiritual diet.  Jesus warns us to guard our hearts diligently (like a man on watch at a prison post), because out of the abundance of our hearts, our mouths speak.  Just as the shape of my body pretty much indicates what I put in my mouth, the words of my mouth very clearly indicates what I have put in my heart!

The world would have us believe that God's Word is no longer good for us.  It attempts to entice with us substitutes.  But I have found that any time I have "fed" on things of the world - substituted them for God's Word, or  thought I could use just "some" of it, it didn't work!  The issue of my heart did not "taste" the same as the "real" thing. For the issues of our hearts to be healthy, we must follow, obey and live His Word, His recipe, exactly as He set them down.

The following teachings are messages straight from the heart of God, given to me in those times of peaceful quiet.  Just as I share my recipes with my family and friends, I share these "recipes" with you. 

So, pull up a chair at my kitchen "table," sip a cup of tea, and leaf through each "cookbook."  Enjoy the labor of God's love.  Take them in to your heart to follow them, and obey them, and live them.  Let the issues of your heart be delicious!