The spirituality of ease

Chuck Swindoll in his book on Job quotes Larry Crabb from his book, The Pressure’s Off.  Larry Crabb says,

The reformers knew we were saved to glorify God.  We moderns live to be blessed.  The mature among us are now thought to be the successful, the happy, the effective people on top of things and doing well…We’re more attracted to sermons, books, and conferences that reveal the secrets to fulfillment…than to spiritual direction that leads us through affliction into the presence of the Father…

      We seem more interested in managing life into a comfortable existence than in letting God spiritually transform us through life’s hardships.

How sad that his words are so true.  We are pretty shallow as Christians.  As someone has said, “Our spirituality is a thousand miles long and only about an inch deep.”  And yet it has been my experience that we are prone to throwing the baby out with the bath water when we recognize we have drifted.  The reformers believed that we existed to glorify God.  The Westminster Confession states that the chief aim of humankind is to glorify God, but it does not end there.  It wisely adds “and to enjoy Him forever.”  I think that the reformers some times forgot this part about enjoying God.  God in wanting us to seek His glory does so because it is only in seeing Him for all that He is and living for that glory that we can be most effective is helping others come into a relationship with Him.  He longs to get His family back and He calls us to seek His glory for the salvation of the world.  God's chief aim is not our happiness but our holiness.  Yet, He also wants us to enjoy the journey with Him. 

The correction to seeking only His glory and not enjoying the journey with Him has been a recovery of the idea that God does want to bless us in this world as any parent wishes to do for their children.  And I say it almost every Sunday as I close that Jesus loves us and wants to bless us.  But as always it seems we have missed the point.  The result is that for some their giving has not been done out of gratitude or love or even a concern to see God’s kingdom break into our world; instead it is done out of fear that God will withhold His blessing or out of a self-absorbed idea of God's blessings as a divine lottery or pyramid scheme.  We have changed the chief aim of humankind from glorifying God to being blessed and enjoying this life forever. 

We need to find the balance that says that we are called to seek God’s glory and to enjoy Him because only He can satisfy our deepest longings.  But at the same time realize that God is good and want to bless us in this life.  While Job suffered and brought God glory, His sufferings did not last and he was restored to prosperity.  Yet at the same time God’s blessings cannot be measured by our bank account or the ease of our life.  God does not promise to make us all wealthy or to protect us from all misfortune, but He does promise never to leave us.  And enjoying His presence is what we ultimately need.