This is How I Pause: I connect with God through Cooking
Johan and Ronel will be married for thirty years this coming September. Johan loves cooking as well as figures (rand and cent). Interestingly their two boys, married to two sisters, have each pursued one of these interests. One has the top restaurant in Port Elizabeth, Muse and the other is qualified in finance. Johan and Ronel serves with Ethnos Movement International in George, South Africa, where they anchor a coffee shop for the ministry. Please drop in for a visit at The Table, 47 Market Street and meet this humble power couple! This week Johan shares with us about his love for food and cooking.
THIS IS HOW I PAUSE: I CONNECT WITH GOD THROUGH COOKING!
To pause is biblical because God invites us to pause and to experience his creation, his goodness, his mercy, his favor and just to remember who He is. God created time.
Jesus was never in a hurry. He got up early to spend time with his Father. He rested when He was tired, ate when he was hungry, wept when he was sad. He was surrounded by simple and uneducated people and multitudes of people who made demands on his time and resources. Yet He paused when, in a crowd of people, a woman touched Him for healing. He paused to talk to a man up in a tree, and He spent time with him.
There is a beautiful transitional word sometimes used in the psalms. It doesn’t have an exact translation, but it is believed to mean “pause and reflect.” The word is Selah. As you read the psalms, so often the writers invite reflection on the events of their lives and noticing the work of God within. I encourage you to use Selah in your lives to help you notice the work and invitations God has for you.
Take time to pause, remember, refocus, and maybe re-engage with the power of the Holy Spirit in your life. His gift is peace, a peace that is not of this world, a peace of mind and heart.
My pause is often linked to food. I love food, I love to eat and enjoy food and I love to cook food. Food is just awesome and it is a blessing from God and a blessing to me.
When I think about food, I think about my dependency on God. I will surely die without food and I will surely die without God and the sacrifice of his Son Jesus Christ. God provided all the food that was required to feed the Israelites daily. They were 100% dependent on Him.
My thoughts also shift to Psalm 34:8 where David says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.” God is so good to us that we can experience it with our senses. We can taste his goodness and we can see his goodness. We know the saying, “You eat with your eyes” and I can bring this back to a beautifully plated dish. This in itself makes me excited and then for the moment of truth. The first taste, the waiting and anticipation is over, and imagine the words of David, not “taste and see”, but “Oh … taste and see”. Your best foodie experience ever, but this is nothing compared to tasting the goodness of God.
You get food for different occasions. You get food to snack on, you get “diet food,” you get food associated with fasting, you get food for feasts, and then you get the full buffet. I think we often experience our walk with God and our Christian lives in a similar way. At times we do not have that hunger for God and we just snack on his Word. At times the Holy Spirit will show us where we need to adjust our way of life and habits, where we need diet food, or when we need to fast. At times we will experience the joy of the Lord and we will just feast on every Word and blessing we receive from Him, but God wants us to live an abundant life and He has prepared a full buffet for us. We must just sit down and indulge in his goodness. We can only celebrate Him and give glory and honor to Him.
The Bible invites us on many occasions to come and sit down with Jesus and to enjoy a meal with Him. Only in his presence will we be able to experience all the magnificent flavors and dishes He has prepared for us and only when we sit down with Him we will be able to experience his true power, where He can take a few fish and a few loafs of bread and then feed multitudes of people. We will never experience this if we do not sit down at his Table.
We often forget that food needs to be prepared. Preparation is a meticulous process and a recipe needs to be followed to the tee. We all have experienced less successful cooking attempts. This happens when you leave out a few ingredients or add a few of your own ingredients, if you do not use your measurements or follow the process. For every outcome, there is a process and this must be applied in our daily lives. We will at times question the process or even deviate from the process, but if we want a perfect outcome we need to trust the God of the process with everything in our lives.
There is always a person that needs to serve the meal. We are all called to be servants. We unfortunately often serve idols, our agendas and we do not serve our Creator. God called us to be servants, He called us to be humble, He called us to sacrifice ourselves daily, He called us to serve our neighbor and He called us to serve Him. He will be glorified when we follow the example of the greatest servant of all time, the example of Jesus Christ.
God prepared the perfect recipe, with the perfect ingredients, and with the perfect process when He offered and sacrifice the Passover Lamb, his Son Jesus Christ, and the Saviour of the world. For us to have eternal life and entry into the Kingdom of God, we have to sit down and eat the Lamb that was prepared by God our Father.
