Lack part 1
You guys know how I feel about this, so I'll just put it out there right from the jump: We have no lack because our God has not lack. God, the Creator of everything, doesn't need anything. He says so pretty specifically in Psalm 50:12, "If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof." God doesn't need anything. How could He? And He certainly doesn't need anything from us. When Cain and Able were getting their sacrifices ready, God didn't want what man could produce with his effort. He wanted a Lamb. He wanted Jesus. Jesus made the sacrifice that was required. And, by the way, the judgment of God wasn't God killing His Son instead of killing us. That's kind of absurd. The judgment of God was bringing Jesus back to life after religion killed Jesus. After WE killed Him. God didn't put His Son on the cross. Man did that. But I digress. The point is, God isn't looking for us to provide anything for Him. He is OUR provider. Our provision. When Abraham was willing to sacrifice HIS son, God stepped in and provided Himself as a ram. What true Father wouldn't lay down His own life to protect His children? So this idea that we owe God something, or that God wants something from us... I don't buy it. I believe God wants things FOR us. Things that are in our best interests. Knowing the end from the beginning, He wants us to experience every good and perfect gift that is available to us. But so often we run around like chickens with our heads cut off, ignoring what we DO have because we're too worried about what we think we DON'T have. We come at life from a place of lack, as if we start with nothing and have to fight and scratch and claw for everything we're ever going to get. The rat race, right? But if you win the rat race... what? You're king rat? Is that really a goal worth focusing on or working towards? Whoever dies with the most toys wins? Really? I don't think so. I think there's more to it than that. Look at Hosea 4:6, my key memory verse for this Rant series, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children." Sounds pretty harsh. Being rejected and forgotten. But I think its more of--like I say a lot--US robbing OURSELVES from what's available to us. If we reject knowledge, if we are told the glorious truth of the Gospel (that God is love and He loves you), and we disregard that in order to continue to try to build our own kingdom, then we ARE going to miss out on the gift we've been given. Its not that we HAVE lack. Its that we're almost choosing to disregard all of the blessings we've been blessed with. We miss out on what we have--on what's available to us--by focusing on what we think we don't have. Even if what we think we don't have really doesn't matter. Sometimes we don't have something... because we don't need it. Because its not good for us. Sometimes we "lack" something because God would rather us have something us. Something better. Knowing what we HAVE is so much more important than worrying about what we "lack."