Pre-heat To 463

If you have ever done any cooking with something other than a microwave, you will have seen cooking instructions which start out with something like this: “Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees”. Following that, comes the list of ingredients and directions on how to mix them or prepare them. When that is done, then you put that concoction into the oven, set the timer for the requisite time, and wait until it is done. Whether it is 8-10 minutes for a batch of chocolate chip cookies or several hours for that Thanksgiving Day turkey or just a quick cooking in the skillet, the wait is, usually, worth your time. It takes very little imagination to remember that first bite into a soft, gooey chocolate chip cookie. Then comes the fun of licking your fingers while trying to steal just one more.

If you don’t do that first step in the preparation, heating the oven or skillet, then all of the wonderful ingredients you so carefully prepared, assuming you followed the rest of the instructions, are useless. They are just one concoction of something that is not what you wanted. Now most of you are willing to eat the cookie dough, but it is a mess and not the final product you envisioned. Raw turkey just doesn’t have the same look, feel, or taste. You have to do the most important part if you are going to get what you want. You have to start at the beginning and follow the directions.

As Christians, we have a very special cookbook of our own. It is the Bible. If we follow the instructions contained within its many pages, we can get to the final product. That product is, of course, spending eternity in God’s presence. Just like in a recipe, we have to do that first preparatory step. We have to recognize and acknowledge there is a God and that Jesus Christ is his son. We have to pre-heat our spiritual oven to 463. You don’t get it? Look at the letters on the numbers of your phone. God is 4-6-3! By heating our spiritual oven to God, we make ourselves ready to follow the rest of the recipe that he laid out for us in His almighty cookbook. Just like a regular cookbook, which has many contributors, each contributing her or his favorite recipe, God selected certain men and women to write His words for us to read. That compilation, that wonderful cookbook, will help us produce the best of all results: life everlasting with God.

The temperature you want to set is 463. The ingredients are the things we do with our life. Sometimes the mix may be smooth and sometimes it may be a bit lumpy. If you follow the instructions, bake it at just the right temperature, set the timer for your life, then what comes out is truly Heaven!