Dangerous Blessings

I am blessed in too many ways to count! My life has been filled with good things - loving parents, a rich spiritual heritage, enough resources available so I can have food, health care, shelter, and creature comforts more than I need. I am loved by my wife, have great children, work at a profession I love (most of the time!), and enjoy robust health. My life is filled with purpose. I know peace with God and, because of His grace, I am assured of eternal life in the Presence of Jesus. What more could a person desire? Sad to say - Plenty! Contentment eludes me too often and I find myself complaining or at least wishing for 'novel,' or 'different.' It is the curse of 'entitlement.'

Those who know great blessing often come to believe they deserve it, that they are owed more and more by God, others, and even the government. It shows up all through the American way of life. Many kids believe that they are owed a college education and never even think of it as a privilege. They assume Mom and Dad are required to go into debt to get them a degree. At the other end of life, many of us make little preparation for those years when we will not be able to work to earn a living because we believe that the government owes us a pension and health care. When disaster strikes in America today, many people sit down and wait for help to arrive because they feel entitled to assistance from Uncle Sam. Even McDonald's played to our sense of entitlement with a wildly successful advertising campaign built on the slogan - "You deserve a break today!"

Believers are not exempt from that entitlement mindset. It is easy to begin to believe that God owes us more and when He does not give us what we want, we start to complain, often bitterly. Ancient Israel is an example for the modern Church. After their miraculous deliverance from slavery in Egypt, God provided for their every need. Most amazingly, every morning they went out of their tents and found manna on the ground, angel food that the Lord gave them to sustain them in the wilderness. Did they appreciate it? For a few weeks, then they started to feel entitled to more. The Bible says, "The riff-raff among the people had a craving and soon they had the People of Israel whining, “Why can’t we have meat? We ate fish in Egypt—and got it free!—to say nothing of the cucumbers and melons, the leeks and onions and garlic. But nothing tastes good out here; all we get is manna, manna, manna.” (Numbers 11:4-6, The Message) Time and again, when God gave them something, they tired of it and wanted more.

And I do it, too! Do you?
There are a couple of things we can do that will help us to avoid the ugly characteristics of entitlement thinking.

First, practice the discipline of giving, generously and sacrificially! I am convinced that tithing (giving 10% of our earnings) is a principle that is good for us. God demanded the tithe of the Jews under the first covenant. For those of us who are in Christ, under the agreement of grace, it is no longer a law, but it is a great guiding principle for our giving. We need to go beyond giving as a emotional response to sad stories, or because we feel pressure from a preacher, or because we buy into the 'seed faith' nonsense (basically a 'give to get' scheme without Biblical merit) that prosperity teachers use to manipulate us. Instead, we should give purposefully, like an investor uses his money. We should look for worthy ministries, well run charities, and individual people that we can help onto their feet. In these ways, we put a portion of our resources, at least a tithe, to work for God. When we choose to set aside some of our wants so we can give, we gain a renewed sense of our blessings. We are able to grasp that what we have is not because we are more deserving than someone else, but because we are God-blessed.

Second, worship deeply, regularly, and from the heart! True worship restores proper perspective. Taking a significant amount of time each day and on a special day each week to focus our attention on God, reminds us that He is God and we are not! As we mature in our prayerfulness, we begin to talk to Him less about our wants and listen more intently to His instructions. In worship we learn more about how to live to bless than we do about how to gain blessings for ourselves. That's not to say it is wrong to pray about our needs. God wants us to ask boldly. But I think each of us can remember more than a few prayers that were more about our wants than our needs. Spiritual worship helps us to discern the difference.

Third, we need to express our gratitude! Cultivating a habit of thankfulness helps us to avoid a 'me centered' life. We keep in sight the ways that God has blessed us. We realize how much those around contribute to our well-being. Thanksgiving should not be just a day on the calendar for Believers. It should be a way of life.

Here's a word from the Word. It is an excerpt from the 'song of Moses,' which he recited for the people of Israel when he was advanced in age and near the end of his time of service. In this passage he warns them of the danger of blessings - that they would begin to feel entitled and forget to serve God. I pray that these ancient words of warning will find a place in our hearts and minds today, so that we will give glory to God.

"For the people of Israel belong to the Lord; Jacob is his special possession. He found them in a desert land, in an empty, howling wasteland. He surrounded them and watched over them; he guarded them as his most precious possession. Like an eagle that rouses her chicks and hovers over her young, so he spread his wings to take them in and carried them aloft on his pinions.

The Lord alone guided them; they lived without any foreign gods. He made them ride over the highlands; he let them feast on the crops of the fields. He nourished them with honey from the cliffs, with olive oil from the hard rock. He fed them curds from the herd and milk from the flock, together with the fat of lambs and goats. He gave them choice rams and goats from Bashan, together with the choicest wheat. You drank the finest wine, made from the juice of grapes.

But Israel soon became fat and unruly; the people grew heavy, plump, and stuffed! Then they abandoned the God who had made them; they made light of the Rock of their salvation." (Deuteronomy 32:9-15, NLT)