We live in an age of immediate gratification. Have a pain, take this pill! Hungry, two minutes and your burger is in the bag! Need to talk to your girlfriend, click the cell phone!
Our American expectations are high that whatever we want, we can have..NOW! Look at what we tell our kids: “You can be anything you want to be!” Doctor, lawyer, rock star…you name it and claim it. Is it always true? No, there are limitations, but we don’t focus on that. So it is no wonder that we tend to overlay our concept of God with these expectations. “I expect a God who does what I want for me when I want it. If I am sad or lonely, I want it fixed. If I am poor, I want to be rich. If I want a certain girlfriend, I expect her to fall madly in love with me.
What good is He if he doesn’t do what I ask and fulfill all my requests and prayers? I suspect this kind of misunderstanding is part of what is driving the decline in Christianity in America today. To be honest, there are biblical instances of God promising to do things for his followers, and I would never discount His ability to do whatever he wants for us, but in the main what he consistently promises is to be “with us” and to “love us.” I count that as sufficient reason to believe in the same way that I count it sufficient to have a wife. Can you imagine a wife who promises to be with us and to love us and really will deliver on that forever! Not as common as it should be in our world today. To truly love means that you give of yourself in every way, what else could one ask for?
God has given his whole self to me to be part of forever. Christ gave his whole physical self to suffer our life experience and die for our self-centeredness sins. He is not the “Go To” wish fulfillment guy, the “fixer,” the giant “Santa of the Skies.” He is the one who will be with you, and whose words teach you how to live a life that brings fulfillment and happiness. He is the one who will bring you to him for eternity.
Life gives you a chance to make a choice for God and eternity with him…or not. It promises you nothing more.
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