Cookies, Recipes and Prophets

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Looking for a way to teach kids about the importance of following prophets? Today in sharing time I used this cookie object lesson. (I brought in three plates with the bad, better and best cookies on them for the kids to see and taste test).

Yesterday, Braden and I decided to make some sugar cookies together—they sounded good. We found a recipe book, found the ingredients we needed and put them all on the table. Then we closed the recipe book and started cooking. We didn't know how much of each ingredient we needed because we had closed the recipe book, so we just started guessing how much salt, eggs, baking soda, flour, sugar, vanilla, oil and cream of tartar we would need. We weren't sure what temperature we should cook the cookies at or for how long, but we made our best guess and put the cookies in.

After the cookies were done, we decided we would try our cookies. They tasted very hard and salty. Braden started to make funny faces. I asked Afton if she liked them and she sweetly said, “yes mom, I did.” I asked her where her cookie was and she said, oh, I put it back there on the plate—it had one little bite out of it.”

What went wrong? We didn't read the instructions that were given by the AUTHOR on how to prepare the cookies and they resulted in something undesirable.

So, we decided we would try again. This time we read the instructions and started mixing the cookies. The recipe called for egg yolks, but we decided it probably wouldn't hurt if we just put in the egg and the whites. It called for shortening, but we were pretty sure that we could just use oil. We mixed the dough, rolled them into circles, and we put them in the oven and waited for the cookies to cook. After several minutes, Afton started pointing at them in the oven—mom the cookies are bubbling!! Sure enough, I went to look at the cookies and they were as thin as a sheet of paper and bubbling on top. What happened!?! I took them out and stared at them. We had followed the instructions. Hadn't we? Then we started to think back. We didn't follow the instructions precisely; we had decided to put the egg whites in and to use oil instead of shortening. Wow, not following the recipe exactly had really made a difference in how our cookies turned out.

Finally, we decided to try a third time, and follow the instructions exactly. The result. A delicious, soft, sugar cookie.

A recipe is a set of instructions that describe how to prepare or make something. Prophets give us instructions to describe how to prepare us to meet Jesus Christ and to lead happier, Christ-like lives. Prophets strengthen our families by showing us how to follow Jesus Christ and walk in His light. If we don't read the instructions we are given from our prophets, we won't become like Heavenly Father intended us to become. If we read some of the instructions but decide to only follow the instructions we think are important and ignore the others, we will be better, but not our best. It is important to heed all of the words and instructions from our prophets to enjoy the ultimate sweet reward of reaching our full potential and returning to live with our Heavenly Father again forever.

Post by Krista