Do you remember when you were a kid and Christmas time came
around? You know that age when it
doesn’t matter what the gifts are, just that you have a lot of them? When you kept track of how many
presents you had in comparison to your siblings or friends?
It’s amusing, this past Christmas my presents I was looking
forward to hadn’t arrived by the time Christmas morning came by. This past Christmas I opened one, count
them, one present on Christmas morning. I’m almost 30 so it’s not like it mattered, but I reflected in that
moment back to the Christmases when my parents were the coolest ever because I
banked on the number of presents I got on a given Christmas morning.
Over the past couple years, I’ve begun to notice a trend. I do that, notice trends. My conclusion to this trend is this: we
act like we serve a stingy God. We
don’t actually act upon a belief that God is lavish, overflowing, or whose
blessings are so abundant it’s overwhelming.
I can say that, but I’m not sure you believe or agree with
me.
Let me walk you through my observation.
In Scripture there are about 25 official “spiritual gifts”
listed in 3 passages (Romans, 1 Corinthians and Ephesians). You’d recognize them if you heard
them…prophecy, teaching, miracles, evangelism (or the office of evangelist).
Scripture says that as believers, God gives us gifts of the
spirit. These gifts give us the
ability to do things supernaturally that we could not do successfully (or as
effectively) under our own strength.
They draw attention and glory to God.
Some people mistakenly believe that gifts are personality
traits. For example, if I’m a
generous person I must obviously have the “gift of giving”. Others mistakenly believe that you’re
given gifts at conception and, once they’re discovered, it’s all God can
or will ever give.
But neither of these beliefs support my claim that our
actions suggest we believe God is stingy.
Our culture holds to some values that we often believe are
incredibly noble. We believe
success is a good thing, failure is bad (until we learn from it, then we try to
ignore the failure and focus on the success of overcoming it – still
emphasizing the success). We also
value control (it’s funny that “self control” is listed at the end of the
Galatians “fruits of the Spirit” passage… because we usually consider it of more
importance than love sometimes).
We stay in control because when we are in control we puff ourselves up
with the satisfaction that God can never be misrepresented if we never step a
toe out of line. For some reason,
this is really important to us, so important, in fact, that we’d rather miss
the leading of God than go forward if there’s a risk of mistake. The sin of poorly representing God is
apparently a worse sin than disobedience…at least that’s what our actions (or
inactions) suggest.
