Why You Can’t Appreciate God’s Grace

Jills / Pixabay

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.

God’s grace is, indeed, amazing. In fact, it’s absolutely unfathomable that God would choose to take on human form, come to earth, live among us, then sacrifice Himself in one of the most gruesome methods of execution ever devised, all so that He could save…well…sinners like us.

We possess no merit in ourselves whatsoever that would make us worthy of being saved. To say, “Well, of course God would choose to save me. Just look at me!” would rightly be condemned by us as the height (or perhaps the depth) of spiritual arrogance. As Christians, we acknowledge that our salvation came about only as a result of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, and not because of anything we ourselves contributed. In other words, His merit, not our own, secured our salvation.

Amazing grace, indeed.

But have we ever really realized just how amazing it is? And do we realize, now that our eternal destiny is assured, how much we continue to need it?

I don’t think we do. Because despite the fact that we intellectually assent to being a “wretch” who didn’t deserve salvation and still doesn’t, when it comes right down to it, we don’t believe we’re all that bad.

Let me prove it to you.

Most of us (myself included), when we have had a bad day, will describe it more or less like this: “I was so tired when I got up this morning. My daughter woke me up when she had a nightmare, and I never really got back to sleep. Then my husband was running late to work, so he didn’t have time to take the garbage out, and he dumped that chore on me on his way out the door. So I took the garbage out myself, and when I got back inside, I found out I couldn’t put a new plastic bag in the can because we were out of plastic bags. So then, I had to get my oldest daughter out the door to school and load up my preschooler and the baby so we could make an unexpected trip to the store for trash bags. By the time I got home, I was way behind on everything I had planned for that day.”

Sound familiar? We’ve all had days where we felt like we were entitled to a heaping portion of sympathy. But I wonder why, in describing the day above, we leave out significant details. I wonder why we don’t describe the day like this: “I spent this morning choosing to overreact to perceived slights and verbally punishing people with harsh words, tone, and gestures when they failed to please me. I took out my anger on others who were not capable of defending themselves against me; I elevated my desires over everyone else’s; and I refused to serve my family while at the same time demanding that they serve me willingly. To top it all off, I blamed others for my sin and punished them for provoking me.”

Actually, I know exactly why we would describe the same day in the first way but not the second. It’s because we are so oblivious to the wretchedness of our own sin that we don’t even realize what miserable offenders we are.

We hear Bible stories about King Ahab, who approved of Naboth’s murder but later repented and received grace, and we think, “That was awful! He deserved punishment!” We identify with righteous Naboth and rail against the injustice done to him, never realizing that God intends for us to realize that we are Ahab.

Or we hear Jesus telling the story of the Prodigal Son and identify with the son who has finally come to his senses, not realizing that Jesus meant for us to realize that we are the unloving, ungracious older brother.

If only we would look directly at our sin long enough and honestly enough to see it for the horrific, destructive weapon that it is. If only we would contemplate the wounds we’ve inflicted on others until the awfulness of what we’ve done breaks our heart and drives us to our knees. If only we would ever feel tears rolling down our cheeks as we fall to our knees and wail, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

Because if we ever did those things, Grace Himself would meet us there in the moment of our deepest pain and most desperate unworthiness. And as He poured Himself into our lives and filled our spirit to overflowing, we would begin to taste how magnificent His grace truly is.

Oh, God, be merciful to us, sinners, for Your glory, and that we may receive Your grace.

Luke 18:13—“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’” (NIV)

Lost Tooth

A couple weeks ago, Lindsey lost a tooth. I mean, she really lost it.

Her tooth had fallen out at school, and the school nurse gave her a tiny plastic treasure chest to put the tooth in. When the neighbor brought Lindsey home, Lindsey came bounding up the steps to show me her treasure. The only problem was that when she opened the treasure chest, the tooth was no longer there.

We glanced quickly all around the porch, but no tooth. We traveled Lindsey’s route backwards to the neighbor’s driveway, but still we didn’t see the tooth. We asked the neighbor to look in her truck, but she didn’t see the tooth either.

Lindsey was crushed.

I made her come in and do her homework, because despite her grief, it had to be done. After she finished, Lindsey asked if she could search some more outside for the tooth. I agreed, and I helped her search. We all did. But no tooth.

Have you ever tried to search for a tiny, white tooth in a gravel driveway that had lots of small, white rocks, or in a yard that also had plenty of small, white rocks? We did. And we didn’t find it.

We still hadn’t found it by the time my husband came home from work. He helped look, and he didn’t find it either. Suppertime came, and I made Lindsey stop searching and come inside. She came obediently, but the minute supper was over, back outside she went, searching. “God, please let me find it,” I heard her praying over and over. “Please.

I prayed too. In fact, we all prayed for Lindsey to find her tooth. Then I went back outside to help her search. It was getting dark. I was getting hopeless. Once again, we traveled the path between the neighbor’s driveway and our front porch without finding it. And then….

“Would you please ask your mom if we can look in y’all’s truck again?” I asked the neighbor girl, who was helping us search.

She went back inside, and soon I heard the locks on the truck click open. We began to search, Lindsey and me on one side, Gisselle on the other. “Is this your tooth?” Gisselle said suddenly, extending something toward Lindsey.

Lindsey and her toothLindsey took the object. She examined it. “Oh, thank you!” she exclaimed, wrapping the surprised Gisselle in a huge hug. “And thank you, God!”

Thank you, God, I prayed silently. You cared, and you answered.

The woman who was searching for a lost coin or the shepherd searching for a lost sheep (see Luke 15 for both stories) had nothing on Lindsey. She searched more than diligently, refusing to give up. She just kept searching and praying until it was found.

You and I would do well to be as diligent as Lindsey in pursuing our requests of God—to refuse to give up. It is true that God sometimes says ‘no’ to our requests. But when He hasn’t said no, we need to keep asking.

Too often, we don’t ask all that diligently because we don’t have much faith that God is going to do anything about our problem. We know that He can decline to grant our requests, and we figure He probably will. So we don’t ask all that hard. We ask a couple of times and then give up. Oh well, we tried. But Jesus says that isn’t the way we’re supposed to do it.

In Luke 18, Jesus tells the story of a judge who didn’t fear God or care about any of the people coming before him. Yet there was one poor woman who kept coming to the judge asking for justice—for him to do something. And the judge thought to himself (I’m paraphrasing here), I better just help her, or she’s going to wear me out by coming before me all the time! So he granted her request.

Jesus then made the point that if a mere man will help someone who keeps asking, how much more ready is God to help those who ask Him!

Again, it’s true that God sometimes says no. Sometimes, He says ‘wait’. But there are other times when we could have so much more than what we have if we would just ask for it, and keep asking.

What is there in your life that you need desperately? Are you asking God for it, or have you given up? My friend, don’t give up until God says ‘no’. Don’t put yourself in the position of missing out on something you could have had just because you gave up too soon.

Keep asking.

James 4:2b—You do not have, because you do not ask. (ESV)

Luke 18:1—Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. (NIV)

Can’t Wait

Cereal in a bowlEvery Friday night, we have a special custom at our house, one that all of us look forward to. Friday night is “Restaurant Night,” when the kids can have virtually whatever they want for supper (as long as it’s anywhere close to within reason, and as long as Mommy doesn’t have to cook it). Usually, the kids choose breakfast cereal because it’s easy for them to prepare and they enjoy it.

This past Friday, we were running low on cereal. I knew the kids would probably want to choose cereal that evening for supper, yet we were running out of options. So I made a trip to the store primarily for different kinds of cereal. Of course, being at the store, I found several other things we needed, and I came home with six or seven bags. I set them down in the kitchen and came to find my husband at the computer and let him know I was home.

Ellie and Kenny were standing right there. “Did you buy cereal?” Ellie asked as soon as she saw me.

“Yes, I did,” I said.

“I can’t wait to see what cereals you bought!” Kenny exclaimed, throwing his arms around me. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” He then ran off toward the kitchen to check.

And I thought, “You know, I bet that’s the attitude God would love for us to have with Him.” God wants us to have the same attitude of expectancy toward Him and the goodness of His gifts that Kenny had toward me. “I can’t wait to see what you’re going to give me, God! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Yet too often, we don’t expect much from Him. It’s true that God may or may not be planning on blessing us with material things, and that expecting those things doesn’t mean God has to give them to us. It’s also true that being greedy doesn’t get us anywhere with God—quite the opposite, in fact. But sometimes, He does give us material blessings. Besides that, he always gives us abundant spiritual blessings.

God, I can’t wait to see what you’re going to do in this situation. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

God, I can’t wait to see how you’re going to restore peace to my soul. Thank you!

God, I can’t wait to experience the joy I know you will bring from this situation. Thank you!

Precious mom, we can approach God expectantly, knowing we will receive something from Him. He’s already promised us every spiritual blessing (see Eph. 3:1). We know we’re going to receive. So we can look forward to whatever He’s promised, knowing that a good and perfect gift is coming our way.

True, we don’t get some things we ask for because they don’t fit in with God’s plan for our lives. But other times, we’re told in Scripture that we don’t have because we don’t ask, or that we ask wrongly. (See James 4:2.) So not only can we wait expectantly for God’s good and perfect gifts, but we can ask Him for what we need!

Are you waiting on God? Are you asking Him for anything? Why not try the same approach Kenny tried with me: “I can’t wait to see what you’re going to do, God. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

James 1:17—Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (NIV)

1 Corinthians 2:9—However, as it is written: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.” (NIV)

Sharing with Mommy

My oldest daughter Ellie loves to read. She enjoys novels, to be sure, but she also enjoys reading magazines and books that tell her lots of information. When she comes across a particularly interesting fact, she likes to come share it with me.

“Mommy!” she’ll say, arriving at my side with an eager smile. “Wanna hear about….” and she’ll fill in the blank with the subject of whatever neat tidbit she has just discovered.

I love that Ellie is so eager to share with me. I hope that continues into her teen years and even beyond, into her adult years. That’s because I love her, and I love connecting with her in a fun and interesting way.

I bet God loves connecting with us in a similar way. In fact, I know He does. God’s always ready and waiting to hear from us when we pray. The only problem is, most of us aren’t interested in sharing with Him very often. When something interesting happens in our lives, we share it with our family, our girlfriends, and the entire world (via Facebook), but we rarely talk to God about it.

You see, God doesn’t just want us to pray when we need something. Just as we wouldn’t like it if the only time our daughter spoke to us was when she wanted something, so God wants us to speak to Him on a regular basis, not just when we need Him to do something for us.

The Bible commands us to pray with all kinds of prayers and on all occasions. But do we really? Most of us confine our prayer life to “thank You for the food” and “please bless all these people on my list”. Do we ever come to God for other reasons? Not very often.

We could, if we wanted to, come to God for anything at all, and He’d love to listen to us. We could talk to Him about our day, about how disappointed we were when our favorite baseball team lost in the playoffs, or about a funny joke we heard. True, it’s not like God doesn’t know all those things already. But remember that the purpose behind talking to God is not to convey information to Him, as Ellie does with me sometimes. The purpose in talking to Him is simply to be in relationship with Him.

It’s hard to have an intimate relationship with someone you never talk to, or whom you talk to only when you have a request. It’s much easier to relate to someone you talk to about everyday things, hopes and dreams, triumphs and failures.

Why don’t we talk to God this way? Maybe we think He’s not interested. Oh, but He’s interested in anything we have to say, simply because we’re His daughters. Maybe we think we don’t have time, but we all have time to shoot up a quick prayer now and then throughout the day, telling Him about something or thanking Him for something.

Do you talk to God on a regular basis? I hope you do. Is your prayer life confined to a list of requests? If it is, you need to broaden your conversations with God and talk about other things as well. God wants to be your Friend, not just your genie in a bottle. And with such an amazing, incredible Friend as He ready to listen to anything you have to say, why wouldn’t you take every chance you have to talk to Him?

Ephesians 6:18—And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. (NIV)

Eagle Ears

Bald eagleYou’ve heard the phrase “eagle eyes”. It refers to a person who can see things from far away or spot things in a crowd of other things. My husband recently coined the phrase “eagle ears”. It means, as you would imagine, a person who can hear faint noises or hear things from far away.

Timmy has a spectacular set of eagle ears. When the front door opens, he hears it, even if he’s at the back of the house and the person opening the door is quiet about it. The other day, my husband was holding Timmy on his lap and cuddling him. Suddenly, Timmy began twisting forcefully out of my husband’s arms, trying to get down. Phil set him down, and Timmy made a beeline toward the front of the house. Then my husband heard the front door open. That time, Timmy had heard me before I even opened the door.

True, there are times I wish Timmy weren’t quite so clingy. But I love it how he’s absolutely delighted whenever I come home. I love seeing him run into the living room to greet me, wanting to be picked up immediately. I love hearing his little voice as he “talks” to me, telling me in his own way that he’s glad I’m home.

I bet God would love it too if we were that attentive to Him. How often does God show up, figuratively speaking, and we don’t even hear Him coming because the sound of His coming makes no difference to us? How often does He arrive, and we stay in the back of the house because we figure being in the same house with Him is close enough—or because we don’t care that He’s home? How often does God make His presence known, and we don’t bother getting down to see Him because we’re more interested in what we were doing before He showed up?

Granted, God’s Holy Spirit lives within each person who believes in Jesus Christ. So in a sense, God is always with us. But I’m talking here about the times when God shows up in a special way, such as when He wants to show us something or tell us something, and we’re oblivious.

If we had eagle ears for God’s voice, I bet we’d hear Him a lot more than we do now. That’s because God doesn’t just show up once in a while. He’s constantly coming to us to commune with us, and we don’t care or don’t know it.

Maybe the problem is that we don’t recognize the sounds of His arrival. We’re so caught up with what we’re doing that we don’t realize what we’ve just heard. It’s not that we don’t want to hear Him or don’t care; it’s that we don’t know how. We’d love to hear Him all day long, in the midst of this often chaotic craziness that is motherhood. But we don’t hear Him because we don’t recognize His daily voice. If He sounded like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments, we’d get it. But He usually doesn’t, so we miss Him.

What can we do to fix the problem? It depends on what the problem is. If you aren’t interested in hearing from Him, you repent. You bow before God (literally or figuratively) and you ask Him to forgive you for your hard or apathetic heart. You ask Him to replace your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

If you want to hear Him but don’t know how, you ask Him to teach you. Ask Him to open the eyes of your heart so that you can see the blessed richness of His heart toward you and His desire to communicate with you—and so that you can then respond!

I long for the day in heaven when communication between me and God won’t be hard anymore. When my sin or lack of understanding won’t get in the way. When I’ll be able to see Him face to face and know Him fully, even as I am fully known.

But until then…until it’s obvious when God arrives, and until our hearts always long for His appearing…until then, let’s pray, and ask Him to fix our heart. Because I don’t want to miss out on even one second of when God wants to be with me.

I know you don’t either.

Ezekiel 36:26—“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” (NIV)

Ephesians 1:18—I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints. (NIV)

1 Corinthians 13:12—Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

2 Timothy 4:8—Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day–and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

Spending Time Together

Eighteen years and a couple months ago, the man who is now my husband asked me for a date. I accepted his invitation because he seemed like a nice guy, and I thought it would be fun to get to know him better. (Plus, he was cute!) We went out to eat at a barbecue restaurant, and we had a great time. When he dropped me off at my dorm (I was a seminary student then), I wondered whether he would ask me out again, and I hoped that he would. He did, and again, I accepted. Gradually, as we spent more time together getting to know each other, we fell in love.

Would we have fallen in love if we never spent any time together? No. We would still have felt attracted to each other, but we wouldn’t have been in love, because you can’t know that you love someone for who he or she is unless you truly know him or her. And getting to know someone takes time.

That’s why many of us aren’t very much in love with Jesus. We can’t love Him unless we know Him; we can’t know Him unless we spend time with Him; and most of us don’t spend much time with Him.

We may go to church regularly, and that’s good. In fact, it’s great. But too often, we go expecting to receive our weekly dose of Jesus rather than looking for Him as we go and expecting to meet Him there.

We may even listen to Christian music, read Christian books occasionally, or do other Christian-y things. All these are fine. But we often do them for entertainment rather than because we are intentionally seeking God.

It’s true that God can break through to our hearts any time He wants to. It’s also true that He often uses sermons, books, and music to reach out to us. But if we’re not engaging in these things expectantly—if we’re not purposely looking for Jesus in those places—we’re going to miss some, if not most, of what He wants to offer us.

We also tend to neglect two of the most basic means of getting to know God—reading the Bible and praying. Maybe we’re intimated by the thought of trying to understand the Bible; maybe we don’t know how to pray; maybe we just don’t realize the importance of doing either of these things. Whatever our reason, we virtually ignore some of the primary means of getting to know Jesus.

No wonder we’re not in love with Him. No wonder. It’s because we don’t spend enough time with Him to get to know Him. And without knowing Him, we can’t love Him.

Precious mom, do you spend much time intentionally seeking Jesus? I can’t tell you exactly how much time to spend; there’s no one “right” amount. But do you consciously set aside time for being with Him and getting to know Him? Do you participate in your Christian activities with the express, intentional purpose of searching for God?

If you don’t, you’re missing out on the incredible, awesome, beyond-belief things that happen when you take time to get to know Him.

You see, spending time in the presence of Jesus is not just some dry exercise in proper Christian practices. Amazing things happen when you spend time getting to know this amazing Person. So the reason you need to evaluate whether you’re spending the kind and amount of time with Jesus that you should is not just so you can make sure you’re doing things “right”. It’s so you can stop missing out on all the glorious benefits that are falling by the wayside because you’re not with Him very often. Oh, if we only knew what profit, what gain, we would receive from spending time with Jesus!

We’ll talk about exactly that when we meet together next week.

Psalm 27:8—My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, LORD, I will seek. (NIV)

Be It Done for You

You know how sometimes when you’re reading the Bible, you read a story you’ve read or heard millions of times before, but all of a sudden God shows you something different from it?

Let me share with you the amazing thing He showed me when this happened to me recently.

I was studying my bible, and I came to Matthew 15, where a woman approaches Jesus and begs Him for healing for her daughter. Jesus tells her (I’m paraphrasing pretty heavily here) that He was sent to the Israelites, not to her people. On the surface of it, this sounds harsh, but it was really only Jesus’ way to delve into her faith. He wanted to see if she understood that he really was there for people of every nationality—that Christianity isn’t a “Jewish” thing only, but a “for the whole world” thing.

The woman passed the test. She replied that she knew that not all the Jews even wanted Him, but that she’d be glad to have Him. Of course, that may not be what commentators might say is the point of this passage, but that is how I took it.

But that’s not all. The “smack between the eyes” that I got from this passage comes from Jesus’ response, where He says, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.”

And I wondered, what would I get if Jesus were to say, “Be it done for you as you desire”?

I’d probably get things like well-behaved children, financial blessings, and good health. But is that it? I mean, are those really even the most important things?

If I knew that I would stand before Jesus and He would say “Be it done for you as you desire,” what would I ask Him for?

Before I go any farther, let me be absolutely clear that Jesus is not obligated to give us something just because we desire it. I’d like a vacation to Europe; He hasn’t given me that. You might like a new car or a bigger house or some other material possession. God’s not obligated to fulfill our requests unless, of course, they are in accordance with His will for us.

But the point is this: we ask too small. We ask for houses and health and money and cars. None of those things is bad in and of itself. But is that all we are asking for?

What about asking for spiritual victories? What about asking for victory over a sin with which we’ve been struggling? What about asking for our children not merely to behave but to develop a deep and enduring relationship with God?

Most of us are far more likely to thank God for a new car than we are for His forgiveness (which we need a whole lot more than we need that car). We’re more impressed with His material blessings, not His spiritual blessings; that’s why we spend more time praying about the material things.

What do we really want from Him? Stuff to make our lives easier and more pleasant.

What is He willing to give us? Far more.

So yes, ask for money to pay the bills or for your car to run or for your kids to stop bickering. Absolutely, ask for those things. But ask for the big things too.

We ask too small.

Matthew 15:28—Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” (ESV)

Close Enough

I love the way little kids draw people when they are just learning how to draw. Usually they draw a head and two really long legs sticking out from the head all the way to the round-ish feet. Then, of course, they add two arms sticking straight out from the legs, each arm having a few (number varies) stick fingers protruding from the end of the arms (there’s never a hand). Not quite what people actually look like, but adorable nonetheless.

My 4-year-old, Jessica, went through this stage too. Then she got into drawing animals. I remember one early animal she drew for me (she regularly draws pictures and presents them to me as gifts). It was a giraffe. It had a head, a long neck, and a rectangle-ish body. So far, so good. It also had eight legs.

Close enough, right? Absolutely. I hugged Jessica and thanked her for her beautiful picture.

The thought occurred to me the other day that as far as Jessica knew, that picture looked just like a giraffe. It had a head, a neck, a body, and plenty of legs. It was even smiling. What more could a giraffe need? She didn’t recognize any differences between her picture and an actual giraffe.

That level of discernment is fine when you’re four. It’s developmentally normal and morally acceptable. The problem comes when we as moms apply that level of discernment to spiritual things.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? Yep, I do that. I go to church regularly, I have a regular devotional time (or at least I try), and I listen to praise music. Got that one covered. Never mind the fact that your prayers consist of a whole lot of talking but very little listening, or that you can’t remember the last time your heart felt moved with passionate love for Jesus.

Love your neighbor as yourself? Got that one too. I volunteer at my child’s school, and I donate my used clothes to Goodwill. Never mind the fact that when your child wants to play with you, you are usually too busy.

When we can’t see the difference between what God intends by His commands and the level of our performance of those commands, we become spiritually blind. We’re like the Pharisees, who tithed a tenth of absolutely everything, even down to their spices, but neglected all the “heart” stuff that Jesus said was more important (Matt. 23:23).

Precious mom, are you deceiving yourself, or perhaps being deceived? If you’re absolutely certain that you see your heart and actions completely clearly, that’s a sure sign that you don’t. But whether you think you see completely clearly; whether you’re not certain whether you do; or whether you’re well aware that you’re being willfully defiant of God’s standards, you need to pray. Ask God to search your heart and reveal to you areas in which you are falling short. Of course, you have to be willing to hear what He has to say.

Don’t merely shrug and consider that eight legs is close enough.

Jessica's Eight-Legged Giraffe

Jeremiah 17:9—The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

Thanks to God and Scotch Tape

My children often wait until I’m on the phone before they come up with things they just have to tell me right now. (Do yours do that?) Such was the case a few days ago when I was talking with a friend who’d moved to a city several hours away. I was sitting in my bedroom, on my bed, with the door closed, and Kenny still found me.

“Mommy, guess what?” he said.

“Just a minute, Kenny,” I said. “Mommy’s on the phone.” I made him wait several seconds while my friend and I came to a pause in the conversation. Kenny stood by patiently. “Okay, Kenny,” I said. “What do you need?”

Scotch Tape“I just want to tell you I fixed my DS case,” he said. “It was split down the side, but I just used this.” He held up a roll of Scotch tape.

“Great, Kenny,” I said. “I’m glad you were able to fix it.”

“Oh, yes, ma’am, I was,” he said, heading for the door. He paused in the doorway to add, “Thanks to God and Scotch tape.”

When Kenny encounters a difficulty, he regularly prays for God to help him resolve it. I could just imagine a scene similar to others I have witnessed from Kenny in which Kenny knelt over the case with Scotch tape in hand, eyes closed, praying earnestly, “Please, God. Please help me fix this.”

I love Kenny’s understanding of what it takes to resolve a problem. (I also love that seeking God’s help has become a habit for him, but that’s a story for another week.) Kenny knows that when he encounters trouble, he should seek God, who cares about him and also happens to be all-powerful. He also knows that he needs to take action to help himself. Not action on his own, but with God’s help.

It would have been a less-than-best approach for Kenny to attempt the daunting task apart from God, that is, without asking God to help him. Likewise, it would have been wrong to ask God to help him fix the case, then sit there and wait for something to happen while refusing to act. Kenny understood what you and I need to understand, that usually we should do both—ask God’s help and be willing to put forth some effort ourselves.

It’s getting these two things in the proper balance that’s so difficult. Most of us tend toward one extreme or the other, either expecting God to just take care of things without our really having to do anything, or trying to fix a problem ourselves and only belatedly realizing we haven’t asked God’s help.

Those of us who tend toward the former are absolutely right in requesting God’s assistance, but we also need to be ready to work when He says, “Here’s how you can help yourself.” Those of us who tend toward the latter option are absolutely right that we need to be willing to work, but we should ask God’s help first rather than sometime later on.

Toward which extreme are you inclined? Are you more likely to feel paralyzed in your ability to act, or maybe hopeless that your actions could make a difference anyway? Or do you tend to find yourself calling a girlfriend, searching for answers on the internet, or realizing only after much exertion on your part that you haven’t even talked to God about the problem yet?

Either way, something needs to change. Usually, the right approach is one like Kenny’s—praying and then getting to work. Granted, there may be times when God fixes a problem completely apart from us, or when God helps us resolve a situation even when we haven’t talked to Him about it. But approaching the circumstances in either of those two ways presumes upon God’s grace. We can’t count on not having to lift a finger in our own behalf. Nor can we count on His blessing us in a certain way, especially when we’re full steam ahead on our own.

So if you, like me, find one of these approaches pretty natural, and even pretty frequent, ask God to help you change. Confess your sin to Him and tell Him you don’t want to presume upon His grace. But thank Him for that grace. For it’s only through His grace that anything at all will ever be resolved, no matter how that resolution comes about.

1 Kings 22:5—But Jehoshaphat also said to the king of Israel, “First seek the counsel of the LORD.”

Exodus 14:15—Then the LORD said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on.”