What God Has Really Promised
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There is often a chasm between our expectations of life in relationship with God and what God has actually promised, particularly between God’s definition of a blessed life and ours.
When we are candid, we admit that we expect from God a certain degree of direct provision when it comes to health, money and success.
We may be theologically sophisticated enough to reject a “prosperity gospel,” but we still shun sin more to avoid punishment or to curry favor than out of pursuit of virtue. We are called to tithe out of anticipation and worship, but more often we tithe because we read in Malachi 3:10 of a promise that we’ll receive even more (more money, we presume).
Even the most basic spiritual disciplines are all too often motivated by a desire for personal spiritual fulfillment rather than a hunger for intimacy with the living God. We expect direct, tangible, earthly dividends for our investment in following God. Hence the enormous popularity of books both crass and sophisticated that offer keys to successful living, or praying, for God’s favor.
“We naturally and wrongly assume we’re here to experience something God has never promised,” Christian psychologist Larry Crabb writes. When the One we depend on to give us a good life doesn’t deliver, “we feel betrayed, let down, [and] thoroughly disillusioned.”
Is God baiting us with our expectations only to hook us into a life of disappointment?
To ask for God’s blessing, according to the Bible, is to cry out for the incredible, wonderful goodness that only God has the power to give—not to beg God for what we could provide for ourselves.
Biblical characters who sought God’s blessing tended to leave the details up to God so that God’s blessing often translated to increased influence, responsibility and opportunity to make Him known.
Can God’s blessing include increased wealth or success? Of course, but that is not its drive.
The now-famous biblical character Jabez prayed that his territory would be expanded (and seemingly received his wish) so that he could use his greater resources for God—not for his own sense of wellbeing, ego, fame or satisfaction. The motivation for Jabez was to be more and to do more for God, and God seems to have given it to him.
God’s blessing operates as easily through poverty as through prosperity, as evidenced by the lives of Francis of Assisi and Mother Teresa. God’s plan for our lives may not include material gain, physical health, relational joy, vocational success and personal fulfillment. It does include character development, soul formation and investment in God’s kingdom. Some Christ followers have learned to embrace this perspective.
David Ireland, diagnosed with a crippling neurological disease that would eventually take his life, was frequently asked, “Do you believe God will heal you?” He would respond with a question of his own: “Do I really need to be healed?” In his book, Letters to an Unborn Child, Ireland explained his thinking:
I’m firmly convinced that God is extremely good and that He does love and understand all the world and all the people in it. Does He want to heal me? I can’t even answer that. My faith is in the genuineness of God, not in whether He will do this or that to demonstrate His goodness.... That’s not the nature of my relationship to God.
Instead of engaging the moral challenges brought to bear on our lives by God, we often come to God weakly, seeking comfort and remedy. We seldom consider that God’s blessing may very well be a life that withstands the crucible of a fallen world.
And such a life, lived in light of the trustworthy character of God despite circumstances,
... stands favored above all.
James Emery White
Sources
Excerpt from James Emery White, Wrestling with God: Loving the God We Don’t Understand, order the eBook at Church & Culture HERE.