Cake Mix

I have just put a delicious blackberry and apple sponge cake in the oven and have greatly enjoyed licking the bowl.

 

It is always the best bit.

 

When I am baking, it always amazes me how the raw ingredients are transformed when they are combined and cooked.  Although technically edible raw, the uncooked ingredients by themselves aren't particularly tasty - sugar, butter, flour and eggs.  But combined into cake mix, they are somehow transformed into something delicious.

 

And when they are cooked, they create the most wonderful sweet sponge.

 

Heat changes everything.

 

In the same way, we are changed by 'heat' - by those situations and circumstances and difficulties that 'test' us. 

 

When we find ourselves in tense and pressurised conditions, we often find that we are transformed, too.

 

The Bible compares these situations to the purification of metal by fire:

"These trials will show that your faith is genuine.  It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold."

 

[1 Peter 1:7 NLT]

 

If we are never 'tested', if we never experience difficult circumstances, we will never change or mature or grow.  We won't be transformed.  We will remain as cake mix which, whilst it is delicious, is not all that it was meant to be.  It is not the finished product.

 

And when we face these difficult trials and tests and temptations, the Bible says that we don't need to face them alone.  God will be right there with us and will always give us a way out.  He will take the metaphorical cake out of the oven before it burns.

"No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face.  All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it."

[1 Corinthians 10:13 MSG]