Laugh if you want, but I STILL bake Christmas cookies with my grown children. We’ve laughed and loved through this tradition since before they were old enough to remember the memory!
My heart smiles to remember those little flour-smudged faces and sprinkle-filled floors. Oh, the mess! But oh, the delight! The sweetness of those moments surpassed the sweetness of the cookies (and still does).
Any sane person watching this exhilarating catastrophe might surely wonder why I didn’t just bake the cookies myself. After all, I could have accomplished twice as much in half the time without needing disaster-relief afterward.
Sure, if the goal was strictly to create cookies, it would have made perfect sense to zip proficiently through it myself. But sheer delight transpired from deepening bonds with my children as we teamed together. Those moments brought combustible joy to my heart (and still do)!
Does it sound blasphemous to consider that God desires to partner with us, too?
We’re talking about the Creator of every good thing in our life, the One who formed us in our mama’s womb! THAT God!
The One who possesses ALL Power and ALL Knowledge…this Good Father is in need of NOTHING! He’s utterly self-sufficient! He’s the God who was here long before there was anybody here to tell Him He was God!
This Magnificent King actually chooses to partner with US!
Don’t believe me? Check out God’s take on the matter . . . .
“WE ARE COWORKERS WITH GOD and you are God’s cultivated garden, the house He is building.”(1 Corinthians 3:9)
While He could do anything effortlessly Himself, God so delights to be with US that He’d rather clean up the mess we make than do it without us! WOW! How humbling yet empowering, too!
This All-Knowing Father is fully aware of our frailties. He knows we spill milk, drop dishes, and break things into a thousand tiny pieces. (You know it’s true!)
We carry this proclivity to try things all by ourselves until we’re clobbered by our own arrogance.
There are some things we CAN’T do without God.
And there are some things God WON’T do without us!
This Loving Father extends Promises to us throughout each page of Scripture. But friends, these promises are not guarantees; they are invitations.
God invites us to partner with Him to establish that promise in our living and into our world! He could do it entirely on His own with His hands tied behind His back. Yet God welcomes us to labor WITH Him, not merely FOR Him.
C.S. Lewis wrote, “For He [God] seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye.“ (The World’s Last Night and Other Essays, p.8-9)
But why? He simply likes it better when we do it with Him. It’s that simple!
This Loving Lord rushes to pick up even the pieces we’ve shattered beyond recognition, so we can get back to doing that thing with Him! What a Father!
Friend, I don’t know what promise from God you’re waiting to see fulfilled. But the Lord sent me today to nudge you into action. He’s waiting on US to get in the kitchen with Him! Let’s roll up those sleeves and get to baking!
For comments or prayer, contact Dr. Lanier at www.HopeCommunityChurch.tv.
