TASTE TEST - By Niki Melton

​Yum… Tis the season for cooking, baking, and candy-making!  It is fun to try a new recipe, or taste something that longs to become your new holiday favorite.  However, if you have ever tried cooking something new, or cooking anything at all really, a crucial step is to tasteit before you serveit.  Sometimes you got a bit more tomato paste in your sauce, and maybe need more herbs.  Perhaps you had some bitter basil, and now need some more sugar to balance out. There is always the opportunity to correct before serving, because after all, it is about the serving and those who are eating your creation.  
So it is with our faith. 
2 Corinthians 13:5
Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Can't you see for yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you--unless you actually fail the test?
 
We are called to test ourselves, examine our faith, and to “work out our own salvation, with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12).  It is important to note two things here before moving to the point: 
1.We are not called to work out someone else’s by causing them to fear (or “shaking some sense into them”). 
2.This is with the assumption that we are accepting the terms (God’s Word is true, Salvation comes through Jesus, etc.) …NOTthe same as arguing the terms of the transaction of our Salvation
 
If our call is to love God, and love people as he did, shouldn’t we make sure we know what we are serving up?  Can you imagine if you put everything into the pot, never stirred, never tasted, never time checked, and then blamed the failure of taste on the recipe, or even on those who were eating your dish?  Sounds absurd, right?  Well, examine yourself.  Take a taste of what is in that pot, and make sure it lines up with what you are trying to serve.  Don’t be scared to even lift the lid because you may have questions.  In fact, the whole point is that you will.  And we are told to take those to our Father, and through reading his Word, and following the promptings of the Holy Spirit, taste it, test it, and get direction of where to go from there.  
 
Advice for this holiday season?  Look up, to know what you should serve up.  Cheesy but true, but just make sure you have tasted it first. 😊