The most essential ingredient to success

 What happens when you forget to add a leavener to your cake ingredients? It doesn't rise.

There are two types of leavening agents, chemical (such as baking soda or baking powder) or biological (like yeast). If you forget to add the leavening agent, the end result will be much flatter than expected. And they often don't taste as good.

Leaven is an action ingredient. It reacts with other ingredients as well as with moisture and temperature to transform the batter.

To transform our lives requires an essential ingredient that raises us to success. This ingredient is action.

We need to do. 

We need to pursue.

We need to actively seek.

Positive thinking, wishing, dreaming, desiring, wanting, longing are all great, but they don't raise our lives to new levels. 

Wanting is vital. We really need to desire what it is we want in our lives or else we're not likely to pursue it. If we really want and desire the result, that should move us to action. It should spur us into pursuit of the end result.

It is this pursuit, the action towards our goal, that makes the difference. This is the leavening to change our lives. 

In the New Testament, the Lord tells his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapter 7:7-8)

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

Did you notice what was said?

Ask. Seek. Knock. All of these are actions.

The same is needed in our lives. We need to ask what it is that we really want before we can even hope to receive it. We need to seek before we can find. We need to knock for the doors to open.

Here's an interesting consideration. The door we're knocking on might be the wrong door, but sometimes as we're seeking and knocking, a nearby door might be the one that opens the way for us to find and receive what we're asking and seeking for. 

The point is to seek and knock. And if where we think we should go isn't opening up for us, we need to be flexible and open enough to consider other nearby options that do open. It might be that going through a different door could get us to our desired end result faster than through the door we wanted to go through.

Belief is a vital start, but it's not enough. Believe needs to be shown through action. That action is faith.

Faith is acting because we believe something will happen, even if we have no physical proof we will get the result we desire.

Moving toward your dream is showing faith in your belief. Pursuing your dream is not passive. Pursuit involves active participation.

Even the phrase "quantum leap" involves an action word. We cannot leap if we don't move.