If God Never Did Another Thing For Me

If God never did another thing for me would I still love and follow him? This was a challenge in a book I was reading. It’s an interesting but I think flawed question.
My instinct was to say yes. If my faith is real it wouldn’t make sense to let it go if God stopped doing for me. If my dreams being fulfilled relied on me, if getting up and over or falling on my face was all down to me, why should this effect my belief in God or my willingness to follow Him. Then of course once you start thinking about this then you start to wonder about what about if bad things happened? What if something happened to me, my hubby or the girls? Would I get mad, angry? Undoubtedly. Would I rant at God? Probably. Would I shout and scream and do all of that? Yes. But would I stop believing? I don’t think I would.
We in western society find ourselves in an interesting position. For the most part we are comfortable, even safe. Sure crime is on the rise or seems to be and we are currently living with the consequences of a ‘me’ culture but look outside yourself. In other parts of the world you can be killed because of your race, faith, political preferences, because you dressed wrong, expressed an opinion or even had the gall to want to be educated as a woman. I’m pretty blessed. I have a roof over my head, clothes to choose from, a variety of food to eat, furniture, entertainment and even clean water. There are even safety nets if certain things get pulled from under me. Other people aren’t so lucky. Due to where I was born I am living in far more abundance than many and yet if something I take for granted is taken from me…?
Is it not a particularly said state of affairs that we live in a place where we even consider the question, ‘would I still believe?’ What does that say about our faith?
We expect our children to reach adulthood relatively untouched and unscarred, happy and healthy. In other countries they just hope their kids survive. Which leads to the thought, if God is no respecter of persons then He doesn’t value one life more than another, so why should we expect to live our lives untouched by certain things? Has our luxury, our abundance made our faith weak? Are we complacent in our faith? Are our foundations on rock that is rooted deep or are they on the shifting waves of sand?
If God doesn’t do… then I will no longer believe. That is a load of…Well you know what I mean. Christ gave his life so I can have a relationship with God, now and through eternity. Why does God have to keep doing in order for us to believe? Is our faith contingent on what we receive? And is the stuff we refer to in that context material stuff or is it other? Is it love, peace and joy?
Now we come to the flawed part of the question. God is the creator, He is the original giver. He gave life and life everlasting. God can no more stop giving to His children than I can stop giving to my girls. That however does not mean I will always give them every material thing they want. It doesn’t mean I won’t take things from them to discipline them. I will always love them, I will always be there for them and help them work through the tough things and I will always want the best for them. Sure when they are little they may equate love with stuff, more likely though they will just pitch a fit that they didn’t get their own way and they may even say the dreaded ‘I hate you Mum’, but I’d like to hope that once the fit is over we can hug and tell each other ‘I love you’. Hopefully if we do our jobs right they’ll grow out of that phase, they will know we love them regardless of anything going on in our life or theirs.
So why then is our faith in God contingent on getting what we want, when we want it? It is easy to profess faith when all is going well but I have found it is those times I am being squeezed that I grow the most. I may not like it and I may voice my frustration to God, He doesn’t mind that, but it is in the furnace that we separate what is pure and what is impure.
I was in a car accident not long ago. Just my car involved, just me and my baby in the car. The car was a write off. I had bad whiplash, some beautiful grazing and bruising and my baby cut her gum. Essentially it seems the car didn’t want to turn the corner I wanted to turn and we hit a tree. At home that night I was having a bit of a whinge to God: “why did it happen?”; “why didn’t you prevent it?”; “why do these things happen every time we get a little buffer financially?”. In the midst of all my whinging God spoke to me. You want to know what He said to me? “I could have put you in a wheelchair.” Well that shut me up.
Don’t misunderstand. I don’t think God was being vindictive or anything, He was just letting me know in language that would get through to me, that it could have been much worse. A fact many people commented on when they saw pictures of the car. Hearing God say that made me re-evaluate. At least we had the money to get another car. Sure it meant we couldn’t do other things we’d planned like a holiday, but we weren’t going to have to borrow money. It made me re-evaluate other things too, deeper things about my walk with God and what I really wanted out of life. As a result I have made some decisions I had been procrastinating about and things feel better.
Our problem seems to be our perspective. We want God to give but on our terms. We see things very much through the lens of ‘what’s in it for me?’ I want to feel a certain way when I worship and when I pray. I want to know I will always be safe. I want to know I will always be able to get that new pair of shoes I want. I don’t think that’s God’s focus though. I think He is far more focussed on our character and saving those around us. He wants a deeper relationship with us, not one with a foundation of ‘gimme, gimme, gimme’.
Do I wish I had an easier life? Sometimes. Sometimes I wonder why it has been such a struggle and certain things have happened, but if I hadn’t had the experiences I have then I couldn’t say the things I’m saying. I know God walks with us through the trials, I know that sometimes His answers to us are no, just because we don’t like to hear it doesn’t make it an invalid answer.
God gives, He just doesn’t always give us what we want. It is in His nature to give, and He won’t stop doing that, so therefore the question is flawed. Then again depending on our answer maybe it is still a question worth considering. If we think about it honestly maybe we will realise our idea of gifts and God’s idea of gifts can be two different things. The path ahead of me looks a little scary but that’s fine because I have faith that God will walk with me through those scary bits even if He doesn’t take them out of the way.