I’ve been thinking a lot about the last post I wrote, and in particular, the relationship between blessings and obedience. It’s always been a difficult concept for me to grasp. Here's what I've come up with. (As always, feel free to agree or disagree with me!)
On the one hand, I don’t want to ever be accused of changing my behavior just to receive a reward -- I’d like to think I’m a bit more mature than that. On the other hand, we’re all familiar with the punishment/reward system of behavior, and most of us, have in fact used it heavily at some point in our lives. ( Anybody else out there use the m&m method of rewards for potty training???)
The sheer reality of it is humans won’t act unless we receive a proper incentive to do so. That incentive varies from person to person, including:
Fear
Rewards
Self Motivation
Love
How you relate to God is a direct result of what motivates you to obey Him. If your only view of God is as an authoritative being who will zap you if you don’t follow his rules, then you’re not likely to want to be all that close to him. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t be fearful of God, for according to Proverbs 9:10, fearing God is the beginning of wisdom. But it’s a different kind of fear than stark terror, more like the respectful fear you had for your parents as a child.
Fear and/or the promise of rewards won’t get you very far in building a relationship. And it certainly won’t guarantee obedience 100% of the time. For all the rewards of Eden, Adam and Eve still succumbed to temptation. I’m sure they feared God and enjoyed living in Paradise, but that wasn’t enough for them at the time. So did that mean He scrapped his whole plan when they sinned?
I don’t think God viewed the blessing of living in paradise as the ultimate reward for being good. That was just the icing on the cake. The true benefit was the close relationship with God: being able to walk and talk with Him regularly in the garden. Everything else that Adam and Eve enjoyed was just a byproduct of that relationship.
God still wanted that closeness with Adam and Eve, just like He still desires to be intimately close to each one of us. He simply engineered another way to foster that relationship, outside of Eden. We still long for that intimacy; C.S. Lewis wrote of the God-shaped hole inside of every person's heart. As we mature in Him, the desire to fill that "God space" becomes our primary motivation. We fall in love with Him, and because we love Him, we want to obey Him. We become less motivated to change because of fear of repercussions or promised rewards, and more by our love for Him.
The blessings we receive really have nothing do with us, and everything to do with God. We didn’t earn them -- there’s no way we ever legitimately could. It’s just an outpouring of God’s love - and who better than the Creator to use giving as His love language?
So how does this relate to service? Well, for many of us, we're not automatically excited about the prospect of serving others. It's messy. But we know we're called to. And so we step out just a little bit, doing some small act, in obedience. And we keep doing just a little bit more, until suddenly, we realize that it has become a way of life for us. It may begin as a chore, but as we mature, it becomes an act of love.
God blesses us, we bless others, who then bless others. Pretty good system, if you ask me.
So how does this relate to service? Well, for many of us, we're not automatically excited about the prospect of serving others. It's messy. But we know we're called to. And so we step out just a little bit, doing some small act, in obedience. And we keep doing just a little bit more, until suddenly, we realize that it has become a way of life for us. It may begin as a chore, but as we mature, it becomes an act of love.
God blesses us, we bless others, who then bless others. Pretty good system, if you ask me.
"There shall be showers of blessing:
This is the promise of love;
There shall be seasons refreshing,
Sent from the Savior above." ----Daniel White, "Showers of Blessing"
