Day 19 - God and...

SCRIPTURE: II Corinthians 11:3 – But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

COMMENTARY: We can be incredibly self-centered people. We focus on our wants and our needs and our goals and our dreams and our time and our everything else. When we become Christians, this self-centeredness dies hard. Very hard. Unfortunately, some Christians churches and speakers reinforce this focus on self by promising that we can have God and whatever we want. It sounds like this:
- If you trust God, he’ll pave the way to your success.
- If you walk with Jesus, he’ll give you the circumstances you always wanted.
- If you only believe God, he’ll bless you with financial wealth.
- If you trust Christ, you’ll have perfect rest.
The problem is not success, peace, wealth and rest. The problem is when those blessings climb up to the center of our hearts and compete with Jesus for our affections. The problem is we want God and… you fill in the space there.

A ‘God and…’ mentality, trying to use God to get our wants met, quickly lead to a ‘God, but’ lifestyle. I’ll define that as when God calls us to follow him, we reply, “Lord, but you don’t understand.” It is trying to have God met with us on our terms, but God refuses to play that game. If we are not careful, we drift away in our anger and self-pity, blaming God for what he didn’t do for us.

REFLECTION: Look at these evidences of ‘God and…’ in our lives. Do you see any of these in your life? Explain.
- What do we pray about? Are they self-focused prayers?
- How do we respond when someone has more than we do? (Comparison)
- Do we get angry when God does not give us what we want?
- Do we feel sorry for ourselves when God doesn’t come through in the way we wanted? (Self-pity)