Yummy Messes.

“Delight yourself in the LORD,
   and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

-Psalm 37:4

Messed up lately?

Me too.

As disappointment sets in, we begin to feel remorse and contemplate what we could have done to prevent our present status of unworthiness, contempt, or maybe for you it is also loneliness.

 Sometimes life gets us.
I know for me I am not always honest with myself about how I am really doing, whether it is deep down issues I am not willing to face or how hard I am really trying to be productive in my studies.  On the outside I have got it all under control, mentally I tell myself I can do it but the truth is I have absolutely no idea what is going on and I let go of the steering wheel a while ago and am currently in a ditch.

So where do we go from here?  How do we get up and out of the mess we have found ourselves in?

Maybe it is by quitting our reflection on things we are incapable of changing and take action with what scraps we have left and trust God to make our future sweeter than we can imagine.

I bet you would never guess the picture of the delectable looking dessert above was a mess-up.  Yup, totally a fluke.  Never in my life have I received so many compliments on a dessert.  Not a single person would have ever guessed I had planned for it to be a beautiful 3 layer Orange Carrot Cake. I wanted it to be big, beautiful and perfect.  

Real life had other plans…
I had decided to use vegetable shortening thinking it would make the cake more airy.  Instead, not only did the cake fall apart and slightly stick to the pan but it did not taste the way it was supposed to.

 

After throwing a slight pitty-party my mom snapped me to my senses and said, “Olivia why don’t you just make something else out of it?  Getting upset is not going to put the cake back together.”

Yeah, I know I have got one wise mother, too bad that wisdom did not get passed down to me because Lord knows if she would not have been there to encourage me I would still be a little upset about how that cake turned out.

Anyways,  I decided to turn the orange cream cheese frosting into more of a whipped cream and toasted some pecans  after realizing that this mess of a crumbled cake would make a striking layer in between white and fluffy tiers of orange sweet creamy goodness, finished off with aromatic woodsy brown pecan crunch. Mmmmm 

Everyone at the party raved over how good the trifle was.  In fact, when I told a few of them it originally was supposed to be a cake they said they much rather would have preferred a trifle over a cake, because carrot cakes always seem heavy and a bit too rich.

What does this cake story have to do with our debacles (I know great word right?!)?  Well maybe that mess-up you are dwelling on prevented you from some plan you had in mind that would not be as decadent as the future God has intended for you.  The dreams we have for ourselves hold nothing on the plans God has for us.  For, He knows what we are capable of and what we got going on deep down that we are not willing to face yet (Rom 8:26).

Though... giving up to God is challenging.  Learning that in our failings He is stronger is hard.  R.C. Sproul puts it wonderfully,

“Perhaps the most difficult task for us to perform is to rely on God’s grace and God’s grace alone for our salvation. It is difficult for our pride to rest on grace. Grace is for other people—for beggars. We don’t want to live by a heavenly welfare system. We want to earn our own way and atone for our own sins. We like to think that we will go to heaven because we deserve to be there”

The inadequacies we see in ourselves He will take care of.  Even if we try to cover them up with fluffy white layers, He will find a way to show us we are not okay, and we need to make a change.  And in His deep love for us, He places people in our lives, like wise mothers, to encourage and help us continue forward when our plans crumble into wet messes.  So that instead of making our mess-ups hold us back from sharing in His love, He uses our experience to witness, encourage, and love others.  He takes what is left of those crumbles, and creates a new enhanced route.

“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.”

-Romans 12:12-13

All we have to do is have the eyes open to His gracious helping hand and wisdom.  So we can share in His sweet creamy goodness.  Even though we do not deserve it.

And trust me, His goodness is better than any trifle.  ;)

"It is just as the Scriptures say, 'What God has planned for people who love him is more than eyes have seen or ears have heard. It has never even entered our minds!' God's Spirit has shown you everything. His Spirit finds out everything, even what is deep in the mind of God. You are the only one who knows what is in your own mind, and God's Spirit is the only one who knows what is in God's mind.  

But God has given us his Spirit. That's why we don't think the same way that the people of this world think. That's also why we can recognize the blessings that God has given us. Every word we speak was taught to us by God's Spirit, not by human wisdom. And this same Spirit helps us teach spiritual things to spiritual people."

-1 Corinthians 2:9-13