Between Our Father and God

"Between here and heaven, every minute that the Christian lives will be a minute of grace."  -Charles Spurgeon

Imagine a father giving his daughter an extravagant Christmas gift every year: an expensive piece of jewelry.  At first, she might squeal with delight and hug her father's neck as tightly as she could.  After a few years, her reaction to the annual gift might calm to a respectful "thank you."

Eventually, she might begin to expect the extravagance as her right.  Suppose that one year the father didn't have enough money for expensive jewelry and bought her something much more humble.  How would she react?

We know human nature well enough to know that once we're accustomed to generous grace, we expect it not as a gift but as a right.  Perhaps we've noticed this dynamic in our spiritual lives as well:

God gave us salvation, to which we rejoiced as undeserving recipients should; then we began to take His mercies for granted; now, we often expect them as our rightful inheritance.  

We might even complain when He doesn't answer our prayers the way we want Him to, or when he doesn't make life as easy for us as we think it should be.

What happened to us?  We made a dreadful mistake.  We misunderstood the consistency of God's mercy.  Somewhere along the way, we decided that His extravagant promises

entitled us not only to trust in them, but to demand them.  Perhaps we've been spoiled. Job's many blessings may have led him to expect that God would always bless him in

exactly the same ways.  God didn't.  Job couldn't understand that, and he even hinted that God might have dealt unfairly with him.  Like us, he forgot that we are fallen, corrupt, and spiritually dead.  We deserved nothing.  Grace gave us everything.

"Who has claim against Me that I must pay?  Everything under heaven belongs to Me."

-Job 41:11

Yours sincerely,

A long-time Oasis member