AM I WORTHY OF GOD'S BLESSING? NOPE... AND NEITHER ARE YOU!

 What does God owe me?  The obvious answer is nothing.  I know this, you know this, yet I live as if God somehow owes me a smooth trouble free life!  I sometimes pray for things with the expectation that somehow I have merited God's favor and He is now obligated to give me what I ask for.  Isn't that silly?  I bet you do the same thing, though.  

     As we study scripture, we see passages that deal with blessing and obedience and then infer God owes us something for behaving.  Obedience is the key to blessing, but God's definition of blessing may be quite different than ours.  When I think of blessings, I tend to think of material things and life going my way.  When life gets tough or I do not get what I want, I wonder what I must have done wrong.  God sees blessing as equipping us to serve Him.

One of the most dangerous places for me, spiritually speaking, is when I think I have been doing a pretty good job seeking God.  If I have a couple of good days where I am able to see growth or maybe get to serve in some amazing fruit bearing way and suddenly I do not get my requests granted or I get inconvenienced, my first thought is, "what else do you want from me God?"  Shame on me!

     God is not my personal Geni in a bottle who is beholden to my whims because I have met some arbitrary standard of holiness.  God gave me salvation when I deserve hell.  God gave me purpose and meaning even though I spent many years pursuing folly.  

     This places my pursuit of obedience into a whole new light.  I, and you, must pursue holiness because we have been blessed, not so we can be blessed.  When we pray for things, we must not pray expecting something because we think we have been good but because God is good.  God does not bless our goodness, He blesses out of His own goodness.  This in itself is a blessing, after all, how good would be good enough to merit God's blessing if we were blessed according to our goodness?  

 Psalm 25:7  Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of your goodness, O LORD! 

    No, we are not worthy of God's blessing on our own merit. Thankfully we are credited with righteousness due to the merit of Christ and on His merit we are able to receive blessings.  

Now take those blessings and go live as Christ... and give the devil hell!