Blog | Grace on Parade

September 30, 2019 by Karen Wingate Leave a Comment

Instant Pot Ministry: Using What You Have To Bless Others

Everything we own can become a tool to bless others in the name of Jesus. Even an Instant Pot.

I loved my Instant Pot the first time I used it. I’ve been a fan of pressure cookers for years. There’s no better way to cook dried beans, potatoes for potato salad, or corn on the cob.

Because food takes longer to cook in high altitudes, my pressure cooker and crock pot were life savers when we lived in the high alpine San Luis Valley in Colorado at 7500 feet elevation.

But a traditional pressure cooker needs watching and my grip isn’t as strong as it used to be. Lifting the cooker to carry it to the sink to depressurize it was getting to be painful. I was ready to move on to the simplicity of the Instant Pot. So I persuaded my husband to buy me one last year as an early Christmas present.

Okay, my new electric pressure cooker isn’t an Instant Pot. It’s a Power Quick Pot. This brand is more limited than the Instant Pot, but there are some things it does better. But this blog article is not a fine-toothed comparison of Pressure Cooker brands. Nor am I trying to convince you to purchase one.

Look around your home space to see what you do have that you can use to honor God and bless others.

I’ve learned to cook all kinds of new things in my Instant Pot.

Hard Boiled eggs: How simple! You don’t have to monitor them on the stove.

Cooked Chicken Meat: I used to cook 5 pounds of chicken leg quarters in the Crock Pot for 3 hours. No more! 23 minutes in the Instant Pot!

Dried Beans. So much quicker than cooking on the stove or in your Crock Pot. And a lot less smelly too.

More Instant Pot Wonders

Beef Stew, Pot Roast, potatoes, corn on the cob, green beans.

And rice! Oh my! Rice doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan anymore. Brown rice doesn’t take forever and a day.

The best prep was making steel cut oats. No longer do I stand and stir oatmeal for half an hour in the morning. Getting up is hard enough, thank you.

One Friend’s Story

Food prep has become easier, allowing me to have more time with less stress to do the things that matter most to me. I was already convinced this was a good gift in my life. Then the day came when my Instant Pot became an investment in the Kingdom of God. A dear friend, who was wheelchair bound after recovery from surgery for a ruptured Achilles tendon, discussed her food needs with me. She wanted to cook healthy for her husband so didn’t want a lot prepared processed food. Nor was she interested in a round of church lady casseroles.”I have a new Instant Pot,” I told her. Cooking basic foods like cooked chicken and no salt added dried beans would be a cinch.

We agreed I would bring her some prepared basic ingredients that she could easily freeze and use later to combine into easy to prepare dishes. In less than four hours, I was able to cook and debone 5 pounds of chicken, cook up two separate batches of dried beans, make refried beans with part of the pinto beans I’d cooked, and make homemade whole wheat bread.

Okay, I did not use the Instant Pot to make the bread. It, like anything else, has its limits. But, not having to stand over the stove monitoring a stew pot or traditional pressure cooker gave me the time and energy to make the bread.

I could not have done all of that in such a short time without my Instant Pot.

What can you do with an Instant Pot?

Here are some ways you can use an Instant Pot to bless others.

Hard boil eggs for deviled eggs. Take to the next church potluck.

Cook a whole chicken or five pounds of chicken leg quarters. Debone the meat to use in various recipes. Bag the cooked chicken meat in 2-cup measures and give to an elderly friend recovering from surgery or illness, or who might be going through chemotherapy. It’s hard to get good protein when you don’t feel well. Chicken is easy to digest. Your recovering friend can easily nibble at some cold chicken if their appetite or energy level is puny.

Make custard. It’s another nutritious, easy to digest but rich in protein food. Know someone who is diabetic? Use Splenda instead of the sugar, cup for cup. Here’s a recipe I found online.

Beans, beans, beans. So many things you can do with beans. Pintos for refried beans, Black beans for black bean soup. White beans for ham and bean soup or White Chili. Stick in a ham hock with some split peas to make Split Pea Soup. Yum. My mouth is watering.

You can either give the cooked beans to the person to make into their favorite dish or prepare the dish for them. Advantage? You control the amount of salt. Like my friend, who was watching her husband’s salt intake, I didn’t cook the beans with any salt, letting her add the amount she preferred.

Cook a pound of beans at a time in the Instant Pot and then make your favorite dish from what you’ve cooked, sharing half with a family who needs some comfort food. Or, make enough chili or soup just for them and use the rest to make something else for yourself. Make your dish on a Saturday and invite a family from church home for Sunday lunch. You can make a Jello Salad or a 7 layer salad ahead too. Easy meal!

Beans freeze well. I made White Chili for lunch and then froze the leftovers. We’ll have it for a quick meal before a ministry meeting or I can take my disposable container to a friend in need.

Do you have an Instant Pot? Do you have trouble keeping track of times and amounts like I do? I found this great chart.

Is your mouth watering? At the end of this blog post, I’ll give you my recipe for White Chili.

Now it’s your turn.

Don’t have an Instant Pot? No problem. As I said, this blog is not meant to convince you to go buy one. I think you would love it if you did, but that is not my purpose.

Look around your kitchen and the rest of your home. What appliances and devices do you own? What are your four favorite? Grab a piece of paper and a pen and write them down.

I’ve shared with you four foods I make in my Instant Pot for God’s Kingdom work

Hard boiled eggs
Dried beans
Chicken meat
Custard.

I can:

Give food to an elderly shut in
Share a meal with a recuperating couple who can make easy meals but need help with basic preparations
Invite a family to your home to share a meal
Take a dish from your Instant Pot to a church Pot-luck.

What home appliance or possession did you choose?

Crock Pot
Waffle Iron
Computer
DVD player
Car
Lawn mower

Now. brainstorm four ways to use that item to bless and connect with others for the sake of the Kingdom. Be creative! Pray to God, the ultimate Creator, for out of the box ideas. And let me know in the comments section what you decided to do with what you have.

Here’s my recipe for White Chili, Instant Pot Style.

White Chili

1 pound dried Great Northern beans
5 cups water
½ cup chopped onion
¼ tsp ginger
2 cups cooked chicken meat, shredded
1 7-ounce can chopped green chilis
½ cup chopped green bell pepper
½ tsp garlic powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp red chili powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregano, crushed

Rinse and sort beans, removing any broken beans. Soak beans in enough water to cover them for 1-2 hours. Drain.

Place beans in inner lining of Instant Pot. Cover with 5 cups of water. Add chopped onion and ginger. Cook on high pressure for 20 minutes, doing a natural release of 12 minutes. Vent and remove lid. Add chicken, green chilis, chopped bell pepper, salt, chili powder, cumin and oregano. Stir. Set on Slow Cooker setting, cooking for 1 hour.

Serve in soup bowls, garnishing with shredded Cheddar Cheese, sour cream, and tortilla chips.

September 25, 2019 by Karen Wingate Leave a Comment

How To Bring Peace To A Chaotic World: Just Be There

One of the most effective ways we can have lasting impact on our world is to become a conduit of peace. Sometimes it’s as simple as saying and doing nothing at all.

I’m obsessed with impact. I want my life to count for something. Don’t you?

I want to be an influencer for good. It’s deeply important to me that I represent the Lord Jesus well and model His grace and love to everyone I meet.

But I don’t always do a good job of that.

I tend to manage moments on my own instead of allowing God to put me where He needs me most. When I do put the Lord in charge of my Day-Planner, it becomes obvious that He is orchestrating my activities and encounters down to the moment. He does such a good job of that!

Take a recent Tuesday morning. Thinking it would be a quiet day, I got an early start at my desk. Unlike many writing sessions, the words flowed, and within two hours, I had a completed blog post on the WordPress drawing board.

Immediately after I hit the “Publish” button, the phone rang. A man in our church had suffered a stroke. “Do you want to go with me to the hospital?” my Preacher-Creature husband asked. Well, yeah! Frank is my buddy. He and I have this script we say to each other every Sunday. It started when my vision improved and I was discovering I could see so much more of people’s faces than ever before.

Me: It’s so good to see you.
Frank: It’s good to be seen.

Frank has suffered several strokes so, yes, he is appreciating renewal of life as much as I am. And now, Frank was in ICU with a bigger than usual stroke.

Since we didn’t know how many people would be allowed in Frank’s ICU room at one time, we decided I would sit in the waiting room while Jack visited with Frank. I found a comfortable chair in a quiet corner, whipped out my IPAD PRO, and started transcribing notes.

I forgot that Intensive Care Unit family waiting rooms are for families whose loved ones are in ICU. And ICU means life-threatening, intense situations.

A woman sat across from me, talking on her cell phone. I caught a few sentences, enough to deduce that a family member was in ICU with cancer, had been there several days, and the family was rotating in and out, trying to catch sleep as they could. Not wanting to eavesdrop, I hunkered down and concentrated on my notes.

Soon an older, weary looking woman wandered in, sat beside me briefly and then spotted the other woman who was now off the phone. A third woman joined them. They soon digressed into a tense argument about the care of their loved one.

It was a conversation I didn’t want to hear, one I shouldn’t have heard. Their discussion was animated enough that I couldn’t concentrate. I wanted to move to the other side of the room to give them the privacy they deserved. Okay, honesty check-up. I wanted privacy so I could keep working. I don’t like listening to family disputes. Would you?

Don’t you dare move, something or Someone told me. Don’t give them The Look either. Don’t even glance in their direction. This waiting room exists for conversations like this, not for writers who want quiet nooks.

If I wanted to make an impact for Jesus on that family, the very best thing I could do at that moment was to sit still, stay silent, and keep staring at my IPAD. The more invisible I could become, the better it would be for them.

When I told my husband later what had happened, he commented, “You did the right thing. They needed their environment to stay normal.” Very normal. They needed a haven where they had the freedom to be tense and anxious and fearful.. A safety net where they could wrangle out their misunderstandings, share their perceptions and perspectives, and admit their honest feelings about the mess they were facing.

What would their reaction have been if I had moved?

Shame at the discovery of their family quibble would have added another layer to hearts already heavy with grief and anxiety. One sister could have told the other to pipe down. That could have squelched their need to resolve their differences.

Instead, in the absence of criticism, my meld with my chair became a conduit of peace. Within two minutes, the women’s voices settled down. They apologized to each other for their sharp words and for how they weren’t listening to each other. Then they respectfully spoke in turn without interrupting.

I’m not saying my presence caused the turnaround in that family conversation. But I’ve got a gut feeling it wouldn’t have been so peaceful if I had moved or shown my annoyance even with so much as a glance and a frown.

How can we impact our world?

It’s not just what we say.
It’s not even just how we act.

Our impact can be most influential by how we react to those in the middle of expressing their brokenness. When we choose to be unfazed by their behavior, we project peace, acceptance, and grace.

Perhaps that’s what the writer of Proverbs had in mind when he wrote:

A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense. – Proverbs 19:11

And Paul reminded his readers that we need to do our part to be at peace with all people. That word ALL includes strangers in hospital waiting rooms. Our best impact on the world comes when we project the peace and grace Christ has to offer.

What other times do people need us to stay silent and continue on with “life as usual?”

The working spouse comes home tired and burdened with job responsibilities.
A child at church makes a mess on the floor.
Children are behaving badly at a dinner party.
A teenage boy does something gross in public.
A couple snips and snaps at each other in line at the grocery store.
Someone walks in late to a church service.

Don’t react. Act normal. Stay silent. There are times when we need to act, yes. There are many more times when we can bring peace by becoming invisible and continuing with life as if nothing unusual was happening.

The world uses the slogan, Keep Calm.

The Bible calls it Grace.

Think about your past week? When did you need to remain silent and invisible?

September 17, 2019 by Karen Wingate Leave a Comment

Overcomers: 6 People Who Found Strength In Weakness

Your weakness can become your greatest strength.

[Read more…]

September 10, 2019 by Karen Wingate Leave a Comment

Heaven’s Choice: Which Music Performance Would God Like the Best?

Which America’s Got Talent performance would get God’s Golden Buzzer Award?

Once a year, our community’s ministerial alliance holds a Singspiration, an evening musical program that combines singing of favorite songs with one or two performances from each church. This past year’s performances included a choir that sang two gospel songs, several vocal solos, a piano solo, and a mandolin/dulcimer duet. As one might expect in a small-town rural area, the performances varied in quality as well as style.

Well, my definition of quality.

I found myself getting crabby about the whole affair. Evidently, the audience mirrored my feelings, for some pieces prompted more enthusiastic applause than others. The more polished the piece or the more poised the performer, the louder the clapping and cheers. I doubt any of them would have made it past an AGT first audition. Well, except the dulcimer/mandolin duet.

I brought myself up short.

What did God think about each performance? Which one would He judge the best?

What is God’s check list for a pleasing music performance?

Execution and polish
Well blended harmony
Perfect rhythm, pitch, and elocution
A mistake-free performance

That’s the score sheet used on me in high school choir competitions. While we look at those criteria as signs of a great music performance, surely God is looking at other criteria as well. Gotta get in that spiritual aspect, after all.

What would God’s evaluation sheet look like?

Attitude of the performer – one with a contrite heart
Song with the most compelling spiritual message
Connection with the emotions and spirit of the audience
Take-away – how long audience members remember and mediate on the message in days to come.

Back to my first question. Which of those seven different pieces at our Singspiration appealed most to God?

I have a feeling that in spite of my musical analysis and perfection oriented pickiness, God liked every single one of those seven performances because they were done to honor Him and they proclaimed the Good News of Jesus Christ.

As a musician, I’ve had this mistaken idea that the better I perform, the more God will like what I do. I’ve had to put the brakes on that attitude many times. Now, as a mature adult, I know better, but doesn’t my response to people’s praise of my musical efforts betray that my former attitude toward musical prowess lingers? So many times, someone has told me how inspirational my music was to them and I immediately respond, “Oh, I made a bunch of mistakes.” Have I bought into the myth that the better my music performance, the more God will like it and be able to use
it in the hearts of my listeners?

Yeah, like God is keeping a scoreboard of how many missed notes and beats I made.

How does one define God’s standard of musical perfection?

Man designed the structure and system of music, not God. The Lord’s evaluation sheet looks quite different than the one I would use for myself or others. I have a hunch God isn’t impressed by voice vibrato or complicated piano arpeggios. He truly is interested in our passion for the message we share.

Any musical ability is a gift from God, something I offer back to the worship of His Holy name in the presence of the saints. Yet, God says this in Isaiah 66:2:

“These are the ones I look on with favor: those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word.”

When I give a music performance, God is listening to my heart more than my voice. Instead of fretting over the power of my voice or the dexterity of my fingers, I need to do an attitude check.

Am I

Humble or arrogant?
Praising God or myself?
More aware of who He is or of who I am?
More uptight about my performance than I am of my ability to convey the message?

Do I have something I need to sing or am I singing because I feel like I must sing something? There is a difference.

The Audience Response:

If it is true that God considers the heart of the performer as a gauge of a good performance, how am I as a member of the audience to judge the performer’s attitude and relationship with God? How can I tell if it’s a good performance in God’s eyes?

I can’t. But I can glimpse clues:

The struggle the person went through to even get on that stage.
Tears on the performer’s face.
A sense of sincerity.
The choice of music – whether the emphasis is on the message or on the music style.

There’s more.

The Lord can still use music and the message to bless and encourage His people even if the singer’s heart is not right with God. The success of a musical performance depends on the audience as much as on the performer. An audience must be ready the receive the gift, to engage with the message, and have a commitment to carry the message, comfort, and encouragement of the music out the doors into the ordinary track of life. That kind of reaction is the responsibility of the listener and the interaction of the Holy Spirit as He connects the performer with the people through the conduit of music. It has little to do with the performer. The performer becomes only a vessel, a conduit for presenting the message.

A performer can’t control what the Spirit does with his art. For that to happen, hearts of the listeners must be open and accepting. They must be primed to listen for the message. All a performer can do is pray that God will take whatever happens and use it to upbuild the Kingdom.

The Bottom Line

The best music in God’s mind is when both the performer and audience have an openness to God’s leading, a humility to admit that we aren’t as good as we might think we are, and a devotion to follow God in righteousness beyond the performance moment.

Whether we perform on stage or use our gifts of music appreciation by sitting in the audience, we all have one goal – to praise and honor the Audience of One who deserves all that we have to offer Him and so much more. No matter what we do or how we do it, if it is done in His Honor and in His Name, He’ll love it. Heaven’s halls will respond with His cheers.

Think how freeing that is. I can give God whatever I have, mistakes and all. If I hit a clunker, it’s no big deal. I will still attempt to do my best because I don’t want a poor performance to detract from God’s message. But after I’ve done all I can, I don’t sweat the small missteps. I turn my performance over to God, realizing He is concerned about much more than hitting a wrong note. And, He can do amazing things with my gift of praise that I may never know about this side of life.

As a member of the audience, I give grace to the person up on stage. I learn to listen to the message rather than the music. Instead of noting how the choir is failing to sing well together, I focus on the words and I praise God for those people’s dedication and willingness to get up on stage. I move my focus from who does the music to the One for whom it is done. I praise God rather than praising the performer.

And I stand up and cheer with the hosts of Heaven because God has been glorified once again. I cheer because the music performance becomes a symbol of Grace On Parade.