YOU THINK HE OWES YOU ONE?

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Thou art worthy o lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for thou hast created all things and for thy pleasure, they are and were created'. (Revelation 4:11).


'I have been serving God faithfully and yet, what have I gained?'

'Be courageous. Boast in God. It is his name that is at stake. I can assure you that he has no choice but to rise up in your defence'.

I hear words like these from the pulpit, from fellow Christians, everywhere, and I wonder what they are really thinking when they sing the above text. I wonder whether we really understand the words in that text.

In church, and outside the church, when believers are encouraging each other to do the right thing, to obey God, they always end with, 'and God will bless you'.

Whether it is praying, evangelizing, giving to the needy and the church, maintaining their integrity, the motivation is always that they will be richly rewarded with blessings.

Little wonder that when the blessings don't come, we get angry with God. Like workers who are mad at their employers when they are not paid their salaries when it's time. It's so unfair. After all, they have EARNED their pay. They have a right to be paid. So do believers get angry that God has unjustly withheld from them their rightful reward of blessings. After all, they
have 'worked hard' for it.

And so it seems we have begun to see our relationship with God as an employer/employee relationship. I work for you and you pay me. Worse than that, we have turned God to this mighty, all-powerful machine that we have created to do our bidding. All we have to do to get it to work for us is to press the right buttons.

And we call him Father. Almighty God. Lord. King of Kings! How ironic!

Let's look at that text we sing so often:

'Thou art worthy o Lord
To receive glory, honor and power:
For thou hast created
All things and for thy pleasure
They are, and were created'.

When we sing that song, we are telling God that he is WORTHY of our praise, meaning he has EARNED the right to our praise. He DESERVES our worship because of WHO HE Is - OUR MAKER : and because we were made to worship Him. We were created to do his bidding (for his pleasure), and not the other way round.

I mentioned above that we often call God 'Father' without an understanding of what we are saying.

For instance, in our dealings with our earthly parents, they often command us to do some things, and sometimes not to do certain things. We as their children often obey them, even in their absence. It doesn't even occur to us to even wonder or ask them to reward us for our obedience to them. This is because we RESPECT them. We see our obedience as their due (which is true).

So why do we deal with the One Who we call our HEAVENLY FATHER, and LORD, in a less respectful, degrading way? Why? Why do we think He owes us one for obeying him? Why do we act as if we were doing him a favor by obeying him?

Infact this minute, I feel as if he is asking us the same question he asked the Israelites in Malachi 1:6, 'If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a Master, where is the respect due me?'

Jesus gave a parable in Luke 17:7-10 (Please read the text for more details). There, he said that just as a servant is not thanked for serving his master, so also we as God's servants, after we have done as he has commanded us, should say, 'we are unworthy servants, we have only done our duty'.

God is our Father. A good father. And he loves to bless us. It's his delight. It is true that doing God's will CAN bring blessings. It is also true and natural that since we have needs, we trust God to provide.

But we should never think he owes us for doing OUR DUTY to him. We should realize that God is God, whether we get all we want or not, and service is ALL ABOUT HIM, not us.

The 3 Hebrews in Daniel chapter 3 knew this. They expressed their faith in God's ability to deliver them from the fire and at the same time acknowledged the fact that God could choose not to deliver them. And knowing that fact, still refused to disobey God by bowing down to the King's Idol.

Remember, God is our ELOHIM (Creator) and He is our ADONAI (Lord), thus, he owes us NOTHING, but we owe Him EVERYTHING.

Always remember!

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