I remembered this analogy today while talking to my friend about things God had shown me, in relation to gifts and such.
I was trying to use the last box of cake batter, but I was missing one of the ingredients. Lucky for me, there was an alternate ingredient you could replace it with. Unsweetened applesauce. Bad news, we only had regular applesauce that even I could barely eat due to how sweet it was! I was going to use it anyway, thinking, “Applesauce is all the same, who cares if it’s sweet or not?” But then I thought, “Wait no. The recipe specifically asked for unsweetened. If I use the opposite, that would change the end result.” I mean it would still be a cake, but it would be different than what it’s supposed to be had I followed the recipe as it was written. It would be so much better with the right ingredients and not with similar ingredients.
The same applies to our gifts. God has made each of us with certain gifts to bring glory to Him. But we also have free will. We can choose to glorify Him or glorify ourselves with the talents and skills God designed us with. Oh sure, glorifying yourself with your gift can still get you success and popularity and such, but all of that is temporary. When you use God’s gifts to glorify yourself, you are changing what the gift is in a way. It’s still applesauce, but it’s the difference between unsweetened and oversweetened. They seem the same, but they are completely different. You can choose to use your gifts for yourself, but in the end it won’t be nearly as eternally rewarding and powerful as if you used them to glorify the One True King.
Little Things In Life 