Do we act like we did God a Favor?
I am reading my first A.W. Tozer book, “Christ The Eternal Son.” I know, I know. It’s past time to have a Tozer book under my belt, but I wasn’t “there” yet. There’s nothing like reading a great book and missing out on its goodness because mentally and spiritually you aren’t “there.”
In this book, Tozer said that we do things and act like we did God favor. I couldn’t help but feel like this was so true. Let’s face it, it is. Do I think we consciously feel that way? No. Do I think we in some way act like we did God favor? Yes, sometimes we do.
Every now and then I feel like saying, “But I read and prayed all morning.” Or “God, I woke up in the middle of the night and prayed.” Sometimes I want to say, “I gave tithes and offerings today, that should make you pretty happy.”
God is happy when we spend time with Him. He is happy when we give for Him. But by no means does He need us to do those things. By no means did we “bail” Him out by spending time or money.
We will never do enough to feel like we’ve done enough. I’ll never read my Bible “enough” for one day. I’ll never have prayed “enough” for one day. And I believe that is what Tozer was getting at. When we think in terms of doing enough, we begin to have a mindset that anything “beyond” enough is a favor, or that doing what we’re supposed to deserves a reward.
We aren’t doing enough. And we certainly are not doing God any favors. No matter how much money we spend, no matter how much time we invest, no matter how many church programs we attend, we’ve still only done a fraction of what we are supposed to do anyway. The fact is that we have to pray against the idea that “enough is enough” when it comes to our walk with God. Because once we believe we’ve done “enough,” we’ve actually begun to do so little.