Recipe for Pancakes-Part 5

How are you doing with the recipe?  Have the Spirit been leading you in ways to be patient, kind, and not envious?  We pray that this helping you.

Today's ingredient begins to take us on a little bit of a different direction.  Today's ingredient changes the focus from what we display towards our spouse because of our heart's choice to the attitude we might begin to have from being patient and kind.

Love is not boastful or proud.

Take a moment and take a look at what you have been doing.  Wherever the Spirit has been leading you in patience and kindness toward your spouse is definitely a good thing.  At this point it is very easy to begin to become a little proud.  I mean, you have been enduring troubles with patience and showing kindness to someone who may not be deserving of it.  (If you haven't yet, maybe you should go back and reread those first couple of ingredients.  Just sayin'...)  You are doing a great work!

This is where the enemy would like to begin to trip us up.  Love is not about the way we feel or what are reciprocated.  Love, real love, is about a sacrifice that you make regardless of what is returned back to you.  Isn't this the way we see it in Jesus?  He took the cross knowing that those He was coming to save would still reject Him.  And, still, He did it.

The moment that we begin to think of ourselves as somehow deserving of praise for our patience and kindness is also the same moment that we need to seriously check our motives.  Are we doing this for the praise we will receive from others?  Or are we truly laying ourselves down for the sake of another?  If our motives are wrong our patience becomes shorter, our kindness becomes sarcastic, envy starts to creep (I deserve better than this...), and as a result our love is tainted.

Each ingredient builds upon the other and when used in proper situations will lead us naturally into the next one.  It is interesting though that Paul, when writing these verses warns us about pride coming in.  Boasting and pride comes from a deeper core issue...not seeing ourselves the way GOD sees us.  As humans, here is the way that we fix our vision problems...we slip in a comment belittling our husbands or shaming our wives?  Maybe it's just to your mother or best friend?  When we bring someone down so that we can be lifted up we are dealing with serious pride issues.

We all have things we do better than each other.  It is only natural.  However, pointing out the other person's weaknesses is boasting about yourself.  Are you looking for their strengths? God wants us to recognize and compliment each other.  He made men and women different for a reason.  The woman was made to be the completion of the man; what the man lacks is usually present in the woman.  What good is it if we are both exactly the same? What kind of support would Josh be if he stressed about things the way I do? His lack of compassion, concern, and sympathy is sometimes just an indication to me that he is trusting God a LOT more than I am, at the moment. Where he is strong; I am often weak!  BUT, am I pointing out the weak and boasting only about my strengths?

Since we are talking about ingredients, let's relate this back to cooking.  Many different ingredients make up any recipe.  But, just throwing the ingredients together is not enough.  They have to be in proper balance.  If you add too much salt to a recipe you may not see (or taste) the outcome until after the cooking process is over.  But...trust me...you will know that something is wrong in the first bite. 

If there is any pride added to the recipe for pancakes will skew your end results.  You do not want to have done all the work of rebuilding and restoring your marriage to have in be for nothing because you had a little pride mixed in.

In closing, think about this...what is the opposite if pride?  Humility.  And if there is no room for pride in love, it must mean that there is adequate room for humility?  Humility and pride cannot be present together.  Humility allows you to be patient and kind without the need for recognition.  Humility is the perfect pairing to go along with patience, kindness, and giving (non-envy).

Mix them up!