A Great Start to Your Day!

When Steven and Christine were small, I loved Monday mornings.  I didn't have to work Sunday night, so I was well-rested; I would rise bright and early to get a jump on things.  Monday mornings usually started with waffles or pancakes.  I loved being home with my children, so a delicious home-cooked meal was a great way to celebrate and start our school day.  As my children got older, of course they wanted to help.  Waffles were a cinch -- pour, watch for the green light, repeat.  Pancakes were a little trickier; timing and patience were something that never really came naturally for my two.  We'd sit down to breakfast, only to find batter oozing out from between crusty tops as we began to dig in.

Charles Spurgeon had a gift for choosing some of the most obsure verses, illuminating them in a way only one with a true gift can:

"Ephraim is a cake not turned." -- Hosea 7:8

Spurgeon immediately draws to mind those Monday morning cakes.  Burnt and crusty on one side; barely cooked and gooey on the other.  He explained that the spirits of those in the tribe of Ephraim had not been fully penetrated by the Spirit of God -- much like a pancake, left to sit to long on one side is never fully cooked.  Spurgeon urges us to desire grace as it fully penetrates to the very center of our beings.  Sanctification should so thoroughly permeate our lives, our hearts, our thoughts, our deeds, that we are "cooked through" with a Godly spirit.  There should not be any areas left untouched by the refining fire.

Likewise, Spurgeon notes, the over-cooked side of the unturned cake.  "Burnt black with bigoted zeal for that part of truth which they have received, or are charred to a cinder with a vainglorious Pharisaic ostentation of those religious performances which suit their humor."  In other words, legalism, hypocrisy, pretention, hollowness, a religion that selects precepts based on personal appeal rather than accepting with conviction all of the truth of Scripture. 

"Let me not be found a double-minded man," Spurgeon pleads. 

James 1:8 (KJV) says, "A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." 

Monday morning cakes were fine for making memories, but just as maturity has improved Steven and Christine's cooking, spiritual growth can cook through all of those unturned cakes.