Seasonings for the Ear

My family and I enjoy watching the Food Network from time to time. The professional chefs always amaze me by their vast understanding of flavors and how they work together. Every once in a while we watch Iron Chef, which is a competition between two different chefs on each episode. As the show begins a secret ingredient is revealed and they have to come up with several recipes, prepare those recipes, and serve them to judges in an hour. I am always surprised at how they just “know” what flavors work together, how they just “know” how to make a dish have the texture they desire, etc.


They probably weren’t born “knowing”, that knowledge probably came from years of practice and listening to experts teach them. However they attained this understanding, it doesn’t matter to me, I’m still impressed at what they do with all of the ingredients, mixing, stirring, cooking, etc, to make it the masterpiece they serve - Never mind little ole me over here barely getting dinner on the table! I try, but Iron Chef, I AM NOT.

There is an interesting scripture I ran across last week in Job. It’s actually mentioned twice, once when Job is speaking and again when a friend is quoting Job in 34:3

The ear tests the word it hears just as the mouth distinguishes between foods.

Have you ever bitten into something and tasted a flavor that you just couldn’t put your finger on? You take another bite, rolling the flavors over your tongue, listing ingredients in your mind, but none of them fit this particular bill. I know I have done this only to come up blank, but I bet those Food Network stars could recognize those flavors from a mile away. Many years ago, I was helping Mom in the kitchen and ran across this pretty little spice can and I asked her what this particular spice tasted like. She told me that it didn’t taste good and I just knew she must be wrong. I mean it was fluffy, it was white, it was powdery. My sweet tooth told me it resembled powdered sugar, therefore it must be sweet – and I took a sample.

I couldn’t spit that stuff out fast enough!!!

It was NOT powdered sugar, it was NOT sweet. It was terrible, and to this day I think of that taste every time I see a can of Alum. If you aren’t familiar with it, trust me and my mom, and don’t taste it! Use it if the recipe calls for it and leave it at that!

The chef’s mouths have been trained, they have been taught which seasonings and spices produce which flavors, where as my taste buds just get all confused! But – confused as I may be sometimes, I am learning, I know much more now than I did when I first began helping my mom cook when I was a kid.

And our ears should be the same. We should be letting our ears test the words they hear so that we can discern what is being spoken into us. The Holy Spirit can act as our taste buds. We must learn to recognize the difference between spiritual powdered sugar and alum. One is very sweet and the other very, very bitter. This world is always ready to feed our ears something, but we need to be Iron Chefs and know what to do with those secret ingredients fed into our ears in a moment’s notice. If we do that, we will know just what dish to serve up and we will win the battle every time.


Don't forget to post a comment if you have your verse memorized! 



Royal Princess Daughter Of The King