Daily writing prompt

What’s your favorite recipe?

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Hard heartedness keeps people apart. It makes us suspicious of one another and causes self-protection and defensiveness to rise up inside of us. Hard heartedness keeps people in superficial relationships based on shallow triviality and away from the beautiful vitality of profound inner connection.

There is a simple recipe for moving beyond superficial relationships. Take the risk to humbly and honestly open your heart to people. Share your struggles, your pain, your hopes, your insights, your encouragement. Take off your masks and let people see inside of your heart. This is an incredible recipe although it is often frightening to implement it. To move beyond the fear, take a first step of opening your heart to God.

Get out of your head and into your heart. Daily notice and focus on what God is doing deep inside you.

Too much mental analysis of God produces the spiritual paralysis of merely scrutinizing the Bible without daily doing what it says to do. (James 1:22) God-lectures and God-experiences aren’t the same. Faith is more than hearing words. Let Jesus fill your life with God-experiences. Preaching that’s merely from the head without the heart burning with love for God, is dead. The proclamation of what God has said should never be dead, dull, or routine.

I have seen beyond religious routine. The scene I’ve seen is Jesus risen, alive, and working in and through ordinary people.

Worship is fire in the heart. It’s not merely a programmed religious gathering. “Fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you.” (2 Timothy 1:6 NIV)

I don’t want to hear a lecture about Jack-In-The-Box. I want to see Jack jump out. I don’t want to just listen to another lecture about God. I want to see God the Holy Spirit pop out of the religious box and freely manifest His presence, power, and love in, though, and among His people. I don’t want to hear a talk about ice cream. I want to taste and experience ice cream and enjoy it with other people.

I love to hear God the Holy Spirit speak through ordinary people — jars of clay — (2 Corinthians 4:7) and to watch them when they humbly radiate His eloquence. I love it when everyday Christ-followers take off their religious masks and let me see God in them. (For a biblical key to today’s recipe, look up 1 Corinthians 14:26.)

When the sunrise gets too bright for my physical eyes, I realize that I don’t need to analyze it. I need to let my heart look beyond such a glorious natural scene and behold its Creator.

Sign up for God’s Frequent Smiler Program. Watch your smiles grow! (1 Peter 1:8)