Good Things

     Have you ever thought about what you want more than anything? 

     If you plotted your dream life, what would it include?

     What kind of “good things” have you created?

     I’ve discussed it before, but my good things have been my constants for as long as I can remember: I want to be a published author. I want to be married. I want to have kids. I want to have a little fairy cottage in the middle of the forest made of stone where I run around dressed in old-fashioned dresses with flowers in my hair and dance in the sunshine on my floor. (Listen, we don’t judge other people’s good things, okay? 😉) 

     These are my good things. These are my dreams. 

     But what if God doesn’t give them to me?

     What if I never get published?

     What if I never get married?

     What if I never have kids?

     What if I never have a fairy cottage in the middle of the forest?

     Will I still follow God, or will I abandon Him? 

     “That sounds ridiculous,” you might say. “You’d give up God because you couldn’t dance in the sunshine in your floor?” 

     Well, maybe not over the sunshine dancing, but over the other things—would I? 

     Let’s take a hard, introspective look. 

     How many people only serve God until the going gets rough?

     How many people only serve God until He doesn’t give us what we want?

     How many people only serve God until their child dies, until their spouse walks away, until they lose their job? 

     How many people lose these things precious to them, the good things they’ve built, and then shake their fists at God and walk away? 

     Sometimes it’s hard to operate when we read the verses about Jesus saying: “ask and ye shall receive,” or where Jesus says how God wishes to shower us in gifts and blessings and how a father would never give his son a snake when he asks for bread? (Matthew 7:7-12) Or how in Matthew 6:33 when Jesus says that “all these things will be given unto you” when you seek the Kingdom of God? 

     What if they’re not?

     What if they’re taken away? 

     I’m genuinely asking: what if?

     See, I’ve struggled with these questions for a while. Not necessarily “will I fall away”—but with the incongruency I see here. Obviously, God is not going to give you whatever you want if you say “I want a jumbo jet and two million dollars.” That’s the Health & Wealth Gospel. And, perhaps this is a sin or a heart problem on my part, but I find it selfish to continually ask God for things for myself. This makes me hesitant to treat God just like a genie, as some kind of wish fulfiller. But by doing this, I find myself rarely asking God for things. Probably—part of me is afraid of getting let down. It’s best to not ask for anything, because if God knows best anyway, He doesn’t really need my input, and I don’t want to have high hopes for “good things” that are just continually shattered. Part of me wonders if this is what James is referring to in the first chapter of his epistle, in the 2-8 verses. But that leaves me flummoxed: I believe that God could do things, but I also think that it’s in His prerogative to not do things. So just because I pray for something does not mean that it’s going to happen. So I find it very hard to pray with the assurance that whatever I ask for will happen: because I have seen prayers not answered just as easily as I have seen prayers answered, and I believe most everyone agrees that God can and does say no. If I approach the throne of God with the attitude of “because I’m saying this to You, You’re going to give me whatever I want,” isn’t that...selfish? Prideful? How presumptuous is it of us to tell God what we want and just expect Him to come through for us? 

     Or is there a second way to look at prayer, to look at these verses?

     I’ll reiterate again, as I have a hundred times before: when I write these devotions, I’m not writing them from a position of being on a high horse and pointing down at everyone to prove that I’m so much better than them. In fact, often, I’m trying to learn things for myself, decide what I think. Sometimes my own thoughts and questions don’t make much sense until I’ve put them down in writing.

     Maybe the second way to look at these verses isn’t that God is waiting to do whatever we want. Maybe it doesn’t mean that He will always do what we want, when we want it, just because we ask for it. Maybe it means that He will do what’s best for us, and by praying, we are able to be in tune with this so that our hearts align with His better. Maybe by praying, we are able to listen to God when He says, “My good things might not look like your good things.” 

     And are we okay with that? 

     Are we okay with the fact that we might never get what we want, the good things we wish for in our hearts?

     Think of the one thing that you pray for most, the one thing that you desire, whether it be a significant other, a certain job—anything. 

     Are you okay with serving 

     A God

     Who never

     Gives you

     Those things?

     Or would you always have a hole in your heart, a longing for dreams that have not, and will not, come to pass? 

     Proverbs 13:12 says this: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” 

     Those good things—those longings—can make our heart sick when our hope is delayed time and time again. Or maybe when we don’t get it, ever. And when we get these hopes, these dreams, they are a longing fulfilled, the tree of life, a blossom of happiness that God has come through for us, proof of God’s faithfulness. 

     Where is the line, when do we cross it, when we have turned these good things into a false god and worship them instead of God?

     If God chooses not to give us the desires of our hearts (Psalm 37:4), will He change our hearts so we no longer desire them? So that He can fulfill us in other ways? Or will He tell us, like He told Paul, that His grace is sufficient enough for us (2 Corinthians 12:9)?

     I’d like to think of this as less of a devotion and more of a discussion. I’d love to hear what other people think, what God has revealed to you through your life. I know it may be different for each of us, but iron sharpens iron (Proverbs 27:17). So let’s sharpen each other and discuss...

     Are we okay when God says: “My good things are not your good things”?