Your Life Is God’s Mixing Pot

Your life is analogous to a mixing pot (bowl), like most homes will use with a special recipe, for creating a unique culinary product. Your daily circumstances that God allows around you are like the very best “Convection oven” ever produced, since they heat food more evenly. They also reduce the likelihood of hot and cool spots and they come with a fan and exhaust system, which circulates the hot air inside the appliance and promotes more consistent heating.
Every day your sovereign God adds the ingredients to your life’s mixing bowl and begins mixing, until its time for your life’s oven to be adjusted…via the circumstances you will face that day. He has the perfect recipe for each day, which also fits in to His long term goals of mixing and baking in your life over days, weeks, months, and years.

In Romans 9-11 Paul used the analogy of clay where God is the master potter and you are the lump of clay that God molds with His divine sovereign hands into an eternal work of art. I would love to pursue that analogy sometime, but today I want to use the mixing pot or mixing bowl concept with the oven.

The simple graphic above can represent your life in the hands of your sovereign God, from the time you were being formed in the womb and came into the world as a naked little baby (with no experiences in your life or assets in your hand), but with the potential to become an amazing product of God’s grace. So – your life is like God’s divine/providential/sovereign mixing pot or bowl, where He takes every single thing that He allows to happen to you and somehow supernaturally mixes it all up together, until it can be baked at the right temperatures (sometimes low, sometimes medium, and sometimes hot) to become a perfect, spiritual culinary delight.

Our Bible references for these thoughts are Romans 8:28-30, which says “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified”.
We are going to concentrate on verse 28 today, which says, “And we know that (or how) God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God”.

Οἴδαμεν δὲ ὅτι τοῖς ἀγαπῶσιν τὸν Θεὸν πάντα συνεργεῖ εἰς ἀγαθόν, τοῖς κατὰ πρόθεσιν κλητοῖς οὖσιν.

Each word or phrase above is defined below and color coded to the same words or phrases in this complete Greek sentence above.

• Οἴδαμεν: “We Know” > Perfect tense where one knows something in the sense of completion and acts as a bridge between the past and the present….to have seen or perceived.
• δὲ ὅτι: “now that”
• οὖσιν ἀγαπῶσιν τὸν Θεὸν: “to those loving God”
• πάντα: “all things”
• συνεργεῖ: “work together”
• εἰς ἀγαθόν: “for good” or maybe better translated here “into good”
• τοῖς: “to those”
• οὖσιν: “being”
• κλητοῖς: “called”
• κατὰ πρόθεσιν: “according to His purpose”

As you can see, Paul says these truths apply to:

1. Those who love God (Do you love God right now?)
2. Those who are called according to His purpose (Are you cooperating with His purposes for your life?)

Let us try and put all of Paul’s thoughts here into a long, expanded summation sentence:

“For now – we as God’s children, who have been called according to His purpose(s) - can know and be sure that (how) He takes each and every single element or factor or circumstance that ever touches our lives (or is allowed to be poured into our life’s mixing bowl) - from the womb through our last breath on earth – and supernaturally works (mixes or stirs) all of those ingredients together into the good (the perfect character, faith, provisions) that He desires in our lives and for our lives.”

This verse does not say that everything that happens to us is good. It promises that God has the ability to take everything that happens to us and work it or turn it into good within His larger, long-term process of conforming us into the image of His Son – the Lord Jesus Christ and in using us to fulfill His purposes for us while we are still here on this earth. In Heaven, we will have no regrets!

Eventually, a baker will have a bowl of ingredients ready to bake or ready to sit for a time, while the yeast will naturally leaven the dough. Then it is time to put it in the oven, but we know how baking is a well-planned process and every step is important.
The baker (and our heavenly Father) will pay great attention to detail and always use quality Ingredients, with precise measurements, using exact baking temperatures with ideal times. He will always use a good mixing tool and never over mix. Cutting corners would lead to inferior or failed results.
When Paul said that “all things” are a part of God’s perfect recipe, Paul meant “all things”. Nothing can be left out. It is hard to grasp all the implications of this, but just visualize some of these concepts below. You may easily see some of these as such a blessing or you may view some of them as totally negative or you may see many things as just normal or average. BUT…the sooner you can recognize and accept all of these as a part of that perfect, divine, and providential recipe – the sooner you can praise God for them and rejoice in them. Every example below would fall inside the scope of God’s “ALL THINGS”, which are worked into good…but what finite human being could possibly become conscious of the scope (“the height, the width, or the depth”) of the “ALL THINGS” in your life’s recipe?

> How your forefathers were brought together from the beginning of history to eventually cause your father and mother to see you born into this world.
> Anything and everything that happened to you during that time you were developing in your mother’s womb.{My mother caught a virus during her pregnancy with my younger brother Dale and it did irreversible brain damage, which they did not know until the day he came out of the womb. Half of head was reddish and he could never talk or walk, but he was loved and grew to be 6’1” and lived to be 39. I got to conduct his funeral service. Then my youngest brother was born 18 months later and came into the world in perfect shape. }
> The time you were born into history (His-Story).
> The biology you were born with (male & female are the only two options).
> The place you were born (in this big ole world).
> The family members you grew up with.
> The ethnic group and culture you were born into.
> The physical assets you were born with.
> The mental and intellectual capacities you were born with.
> The financial or economic environment you were born into.
> The social environment you were born into.
> The bodily or emotional challenges you face over your life’s span.
> The health events you will face over your life’s span.
> Any accidents you experience during your life, even if they were the result of ignorant or bad decisions you made or they spring from the result of criminal activities – with you as the victim.
> Any successes or failures you go through during your life.
> Any and all pain, suffering, weakness, or limitations you face from sickness, disease, or whatever.
> Any rejection or persecution you face during your life.

If you used a graph to illustrate the way you feel about the scope of “ALL THINGS”, you may feel like your life over time is pretty positive, like this first line that just gradually keeps going upward. Maybe you were born into a well-to-do family and there were not many challenges growing up and your adult life has kind of continued in that direction.

Or you may feel like your life over time is pretty negative like this second line that just gradually keeps going downward. Life has been hard from the very beginning, growing up the way you did and continues like that, as you try to make it as an adult in this world.

Or you may feel like your life over time has its ups and its downs like this third line with low points and high points. You have experienced failures and successes in growing up and as a working adult.

This is why Paul cried out in Romans 8:35-39: Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean He no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, “For Your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.” No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

What can we possibly do, but fall down before God Almighty and pray and sing the Doxology?

Praise God from whom all blessings flow;

Praise him, all creatures here below;

Praise him above, ye heavenly host;

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

And we as God’s grateful children say: “AMEN & AMEN”!

Until next time….Yours in Christ
Gene