Blessings can be a dangerous thing. When God chooses to show us favor, we have to be very careful how we respond to it. If we become selfish or complacent with the things He gives us, we turn that blessing into a curse.
In our country, we have been given so many blessings. We have material wealth, good healthcare, abounding opportunities, and relative safety and protection from enemies. In fact, our biggest enemy has become ourselves.
We have become complacent and ungrateful for the blessings that have been given to us. We do not value our education system. Most kids go to college so they can postpone working, or so they can party and have a good time. They do not appreciate the value of the opportunities that are given to them.
We take our healthcare for granted so much, that we make little effort to care for ourselves. We abuse our bodies and our minds, and just pass it off to some doctor to fix us when we begin to deteriorate.
We have easy access to so many things, and convenience has become our priority. Never mind that we are destroying the resources given to us, the things we depend on. Who cares, we will just dump it on somebody else, or buy more when ours runs out.
We care very little about how our lives affect the world or the people around us. We don’t even care much about the negative affects our behavior has on ourselves. We are oblivious.
I have seen some of that behavior displayed among our teams, and even in myself. We take it for granted that somebody went out of their way and made a huge sacrifice to offer us their property to call our home. We take it over, and abuse it just as we are used to doing with our things at home. We do not respect it or appreciate it as we should.
Things accidentally get broken, or lost, or worn out from overuse. We don’t realize the impact we have. We are not used to preserving things; we come from a disposable society.
Don’t get me wrong, we are not being intentionally disrespectful. We simply have not yet fully realized what we have been given, or learned how to really appreciate it. We have not yet realized that we have nothing of our own, accept what we carry on our backs. I think we still expect our accommodations to be provided. We have not come to the understanding that we are completely homeless if not for the graciousness and generosity of the hosts God has placed in our paths.
I know it’s a lesson that will be learned the first time we have to find our own place to call home. Or when something is accidentally broken and we have to use our food money to repair it. It is by those hard lessons that we will learn.
Even now, I am struggling with one of God’s blessings. He has blessed my team to have three Spanish speakers, while other teams don’t have any. It has made ministry a lot easier, and it is a great resource to have. My struggle is with my own complacency. It is easy for me to just let them do the talking rather than putting in the effort to learn Spanish too. I am missing out on friendships, and I am not contributing to the ministry as much as I should, because it is easier to pass it off to them than to take on the challenge of learning a language. I know in my heart that I am cheating myself, the people we are meeting and God by not doing my part, but still my flesh causes me to hide out.
No more! I have got to let that flesh die, and it has to die now. I need to set aside my fears of looking foolish, and just accept that I will. So what. Being a fool is better than being dead or asleep.
Please pray with me about this, that God will continue to push me outside of the box I put myself in. Gloria a Dios!
