There’s something exciting about seeing a vending machine. Each one to me is a chance to grab any number of tasty snacks conveniently. It’s funny because most vending machines have surprisingly little that I consider to be good snacks, and they are usually marked up expensively. Still, I always get excited. I enjoy the chance to use a little of my hard-earned money to pick a reward, and enjoy it. Can you relate?
Now what happens when that vending machine doesn’t work properly? Maybe it eats our money without responding. Maybe it tries to drop the snack, but it gets stuck. Whenever this happens to me, I tend to get really frustrated. That was my money after all! I earned it, I worked for it, and I came to exchange it for something I want. Have you been there? Often I think our interactions with God go similarly. How frequently do we find ourselves lacking what we desire from God, the thing we prayed about and worked toward endlessly? Maybe it’s finding a spouse, getting a promotion, having a child, buying a home, traveling somewhere new, completing a project, or being recognized by our peers. We pray, we seek, we work, yet we are denied. So how do we fix this?
Here’s a hint: we don’t. Why? Because God is not a vending machine.
We so easily get into this toxic mindset that somehow God owes us. Even if we don’t think we’re acting that way, our actions and reactions betray us.
I can see in my own life how often I have messed up with sin and temptation, and immediately thought “I’ll never be worthy of God’s love”. This is a true, humbling statement. I’m not worthy, he gives it to me anyway. Often a moment like this is followed with God showing me mercy and grace in some area. For example if I stay up late engaging in selfish behavior, God might still bless me with a good night’s sleep. On the flip side, I’ll have days where I stay focused on serving God, denying myself, and turning away the devil. Then I’ll go to sleep with a smile, thinking that I’ve earned great rewards from God. Yikes, talk about entitlement! Ironically sometimes those are the nights I get the worst sleep. So wait, does that mean I have a healthier relationship with God when I sin? That has some scary connotations. Does it mean I get greater blessings when I sin? No, it means God’s love extends beyond my behavior. My relationship with God isn’t better when I sin, not even close. As I reflect on moments like these, I realize that sometimes I might think I’m doing right in God’s eyes, but I’m still sinning through entitlement.
There’s a wonderful book called The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller that focuses on this very concept. I highly recommend checking it out. As a general summary, we often try to get power over God by assuming that we do not need him if we can control our own lives. I would argue we even take it a step further by assuming that God is somehow indebted to us because of our good deeds. Going back to my vending machine analogy, we do good deeds as our way of working hard for coins, then we expect that we can put those coins “into” God in exchange for the exact miracles and blessings we want. If we put in the coins and nothing comes out, we get angry and start hitting the machine.
Does this analogy make you uncomfortable? It certainly does for me, and I’m grateful. Being uncomfortable snaps us out of our entitlement and selfishness. But where do we go from there? How do we change our hearts to have a humble focus on God AND do good works for him? Well, I don’t believe we can do this on our own, we need Jesus. Luckily for us, we have an entire collection of 66 books bound together in the bible, that show us who God is and how he guides us. My challenge for me, and for you, is to seek him. Pray for a change of our hearts, read his word to better know him, and be ready to show his love to those who don’t deserve it. Because after all, we don’t deserve it either, yet it’s freely given to us.
Mark 12:30-31(NIV) – Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
James 4:6-10 (NIV) – But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.”
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
Philippians 2:3–8 (NIV) – Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!