I spend a lot of time praying for God’s help. You probably do too. There are things that seem good to me…….things that I want to happen……..and I pray for them. So far so good.
I read the Bible just about every day. It contains a lot of good advice…..and a lot of rules. So far so good.
But there is a problem. When I pray…….when you pray…….do you ever ask for something that you don’t like, that you don’t want?
Do you ever ask God to raise your taxes and use the money to feed the poor? Do you ever pray for God to heal justice Ginsberg? Do you ever pray for the end of abortion?
How do you react when you read a Bible verse that you don’t like…….. perhaps a verse that tells you that you are doing something wrong…….or failing to do something?
“Do not commit adultery”
Give 10% to the church
There is a common thread here. We pray for what WE want. We embrace the passages in the Bible that agree with what WE want to do. We often go a step further…….we reject or ignore the parts of the Bible that are in conflict with our wants, our needs, our appetites.
The Bible says don’t commit murder but a great many Christians support gun ownership. A great many Christians support abortion. You can make a strong argument that in a soundly Bible based society……..neither of these would exist. How can this be?
I think that what it comes down to is “Who is in charge”? In other words who do I trust the most God……….or myself?
We spend a lot of our prayers trying to recruit God to “our side”.
We spend a lot of intellectual energy trying to twist the Bible until it agrees with what we want. In a word, we are trying to get God to align himself with us…….to join our team.
There was a world war two movie where a captured German officer says of his captors, “you were always so sure that God was on your side”. He clearly believed in God and had convinced himself that there was no conflict between the Bible and the actions of his government.
So my meditation today is this………am I struggling to conform myself to God……or am I struggling to conform God to me?
Of these two approaches……. the first is difficult and may not be much fun………..but the second is doomed.
“My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”
Abraham Lincoln