I made some pretty awful pizza this weekend.

Now, we have homemade pizza every Friday night. I’m not new here. But things went terribly wrong when I decided to improvise.

I had some tomato sauce leftover from another recipe. It was about twice as much as I usually use but I thought it would be fine, and besides, I wanted to use up what we had in the fridge. Next up was the cheese. Half a bag of mozzarella? Dump it on there. I had two hungry men to feed, after all, because Ben’s friend Matt had graciously offered to help us with some heavy yard work. Hmm..it seemed like a lot of cheese, but the more the better, right? I topped it off with some pepperoni and banana peppers and popped it into the oven.

After about half an hour I took it out. It looked…interesting. Apparently the tidewater of pizza sauce had floated out to the edges of the pan, carrying the mountain of cheese with it and burying the now non-existent crust. When I wheeled the pizza cutter through the layers, I noticed a gummy layer of dough that hadn’t cooked all the way through. It was most likely too saturated with all that extra sauce. Back into the oven for another 15 minutes, and when I pulled it out again it was quite a bit darker on top this time and still just a bit doughy in the middle. And boy, was it floppy! At least it didn’t taste that great.

The men kindly ate it anyway (probably because they were starving by this point), but it was a very terrible pizza.

The Great Pizza Debacle of 22 made me realize something: it’s always better to stick to the recipe. And I think this is true in lots of areas of life.

Whenever we pile on things we weren’t designed to carry (even too much of the good stuff), it’s not going to turn out well.

As a Christian, I believe people were designed by God to live within the good boundaries he lays out for us in the Bible. And when we add to that recipe, life tends to not hold up well under the added weight. Conversely, if we omit certain things the recipe calls for, we’re not actually following the recipe. We’re going to end up with something very different. What is pizza without the dough? Similarly, what is faith in God without his Word to sustain and direct us?

The things we aren’t meant to carry can weigh us down in so many different ways. Whether we’re over-scheduled, or working to earn salvation by being “good people”, or trying to be relevant to the culture in order to make Jesus appealing, or worrying about other peoples’ approval or expectations; carrying too heavy a load leaves us floppy and weak.

We also should never try to amend the recipe to make other people happy. You know what? There are some people who just don’t like pizza. Yep, crazies. They would have us change everything we’re made of in order to make Christianity pizza more palatable to them. But that’s not our problem. And it’s not our job. We are who God says we are. Pizza is pizza.

Christians, let’s make sure we are being built into the masterpizza (I know. I hate me, too) God wants to create. Stick to the recipe. Don’t forget the essentials. Leave off the extras.

His recipe plan is perfect.

Angela