Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese

Roberta's Tomato Soup 

has been the goal of my culinary efforts for years.  Serve Dan a bowl of this priceless mix of ingredients and we are sure to have a lovely evening at home. Add a grilled cheese, Monterey Jack cheese on Publix's multigrain whole wheat with real butter used to grill in an iron skillet, and you have a supper fit for a king!  At least the king of our castle, Danny, loves it!

However, the ingredients of the soup I serve are clearly not Roberta's 'scratch' recipe.  Danny's mom, Roberta Betzer Pearl, never wrote down that famous dish Dan drools over. Nevertheless, Danny, being a consummate gentleman, always raves over whatever is tasty and good served to him. 

The next best thing is to use Progresso Tomato Basil Soup and add a few spices or even a few diced canned tomatoes and we are good to go. Roberta's real deal tomato soup is certainly nowhere to be found at our house -- only my version of it when I make his favorite from scratch. (Recipe to be found in various cookbooks. . . ). Actually, this experiment with tomato soup is my love-gift to Dan. . . appealing to his taste buds and knowing his great affection for his mom's famous tomato soup and her homemade pies (which I don't attempt).

I have an ulterior motive with tomato soup and grilled cheese -- I am lovin' on my husband in a way that is a reminder of his wonderful idyllic childhood, too!  Can't miss with that! 

The congregation where Dan is the messenger for the services hears him say that he loves to come home to me every night to enjoy the above menu served on laptrays while we eat in our double recliner. This part is true.   The menu is NOT always the same, of course.  However that is the what some people think we have for our nightly fare at home. 

I mention this because it is one of the staple ingredients of Pastor Dan's message when He is preaching on the godly home. It works.  The image of contentment and enjoyment of each other and the evidence of love for one another -- it is there in that picture of our life at home. Oh, I know Pastor Dan comes home because it is where home is. But he would not feel the same way about home if I weren't there. I am always there to greet him eagerly and be lavish with my love in ways I've learned delight him. I want to daily reestablish our home as the best haven for refueling.  The house doesn't do it without my being there. It is our being together that recharges us both at the end of a long day of pouring out our lives for our Lord.

We love together, laugh together, pray together, play together when we can, plan together, and live together in harmony and oneness in Christ Jesus.  We intentionally bring our lives into harmony with each other, tuning up our focus as we eagerly encourage one another in our obedience to the Lord who is our Life. We are able to serve Him joyfully as the Holy Spirit leads us. Dan  encourages my call to the ministry and allows me freedom to obey all that God puts on my heart. We are equal in this journey, however our roles are defined by the Word of God, therefore we always need time for a constant refreshing of our attitudes toward the Lord and each other and our family and those of our congregation and those not yet part of the family of God.

It is the washing of the Word of God which cleanses us from the dust and debris of the world system's philosophies which govern the communities we and our congregation live in.  So we need to have the Holy Spirit continually bring our minds back to the way God works, His Kingdom rule  and God's Presence and His Divine order, so as not to let the love of the world, the influence of the godless world system's ways, become part of our personal lives. 

It is our personal surrender to Christ as Lord of Life which gives each one of us a trust in the other. Because I know Dan's highest order of his day is to honor the Lord in all His ways, I am able to release Him to God's call as pastor/teacher of God's people and example to the watching world.  I do not have to monitor his life and ways in order to have peace of mind.  I trust the Lord, His God, who is Lord over both our lives.  We are "eaches" but first we each are the Lord's!!  

There is personal peace during each day we have to fulfill God's purpose in our lives.  He is the One who guides our way.  We each live by the Word, especially this admonition: "Trust in the Lord with all our heart; lean not to your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path" Proverbs 3:5,6. 

The keeping of our personal lives is our individual responsibility toward God.  Because God has been invited to be the Lord of each of our lives, we come together before Him to present ourselves as "living sacrifices" each day -- not as a ritual, but as a habit of our attitude which has been developed in our daily worship of the Lord.  How amazing it is to trust the Lord in life to bring us to pay attention to matters which God knows could distract us from His purpose and calling.

The Holy Spirit is continually bringing us to attention to the focus of our living and ministry: Jesus Christ, Lord of all. This evidence of the Holy Spirit's daily teaching and training us in God's ways is no different from any other believer, or disciple of Jesus Christ.  We must have the Holy Spirit's gifts and power to minister each day as unto the Lord. We each give ourselves in daily worship as a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to Jesus Christ, which is our duty or reasonable, or expected service to the Lord. It is God's intention to have us as His personal possessions to use as He chooses to accomplish His will and purpose for our lives. 

The joy of belonging to the Lord is a secure feeling which nothing can remove, except for a willful disobedience to the Lord and His Word.  God does not change in His desire and delight to bless His faithful children.

Unfaithfulness to the Lord brings pain--loss of peace and fellowship with the Lord. I find there is no delight at the moment of disobedience and the resulting chastisement. Yet, once that chastening season or moment is over, there is delight in being able to feel our Father's love in the restored fellowship.  His correction prompts me to seek forgiveness, cleansing and restored wholeness.

The Holy Spirit is not always subtle in bringing correction, but He is loving and does not letup until the desired wholeness is attained.  What a comfort it is to me to know that God convicts of sin.  His conviction is immediate.  When we walk in the Spirit and have our senses tuned to the Lord and His Word, we are easily able to detect conviction of sin!  It shows up in the sense level immediately. . . that is, unless you have chosen to harden your heart by habitual sinning - disregard for the Lord.

There is nothing more grievous to my heart than to realize that I have been out of harmony with the Lord concerning some part of my life of devotion to Him.  The first place it shows up is in my relationship with Dan. . . my first love after my love for the Lord. So maintaining my relationship with the Lord and responding to His grace will always assure a smooth relationship with my husband. The heart cannot hide sin without marring the flow of love!

God is patient in His prodding to restore wholeness and become full of the Spirit's overflowing River of Life -- the welling up within of the Saving Life of Jesus Christ and the fulfillment of the Father's love outpoured day after day.

There is nothing more important to my personal spiritual progress than paying attention -- returning my attentiveness to the Lord. This requires an intentional act of hauling myself out of the muck of the deluge of words from the world system into the inner chamber with God. It is there where His is the only voice--His alone is the voice of reasonable wisdom and the sanity of full knowledge and understanding of all things. God recognizes my foundation of the fear of the Lord, the beginning of all intelligence that is truth concerning all things for life and godliness. Being embraced in that inner chamber restores my focus and grants supernatural strength for the spiritual ministry required of all Kingdom subjects who live on Divine assignment in this life. 

This process of our gracious God's training of His beloved  children for Kingdom-living goes on moment by moment. Never are we severed from His Love, but we must respond to His Presence.  We have been birthed into His Life and have been given a Life-attachment internally with the Living God...through our faith in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit creates a bond of Divine Unification with our human spirit, making us alive, quickening us with His Resurrection Life, the same life that raised Jesus from the dead, so that we now live, dead to the old self-which was crucified with Christ, but now made alive to God through the Resurrection Life we have been given through Jesus Christ.

This reality gives us Christ as the solid Rock beneath our feet. . . an unmovable foundation for living. . .a Life that has conquered death, hell and the grave. This Jesus has become the Spirit of Life which courses through our being and grants to us an ability in living which enables a change of character, a new nature in Christ Jesus, and an awareness of the power of God which is animating our new way of living in Christ.  

Through Christ Jesus we live free to enjoy God's recipe for life success!!! Life that endures! Life! Not the dying we see all around us. Dead men walking. Those people who have yet to receive Jesus. . . God who is Life! Today we live Christ and speak of Him in words which are Life-giving! Not sure about supper after church tonight. . .it may be my version of tomato soup and grilled cheese, a not-so-subtle reminder that pleasing my husband is part of pleasing my Lord and receiving the Lord's blessings. I love the simple blessing of sitting with Danny B in the double love-seat recliner holding our lap trays, enjoying Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese. . .and finally, holding hands -- feeling so secure in Dan's love. . . .one of the joys of honoring him. ~