When we receive gifts and blessings from God, there are two opposite ways our hearts can go. The gift is the same, but the paths lead to drastically different results. One ends in us belittling God, the other honors him.
Path One: Turn Away from God Because of the Gift
The first route is to turn away from God when we receive his gift. Turning away from him seems counterintuitive since it’s a gift from God. But we do it daily. God blesses us and we return the favor by forsaking him.
And to be clear, this turning away isn’t merely adjacent to the gift (meaning, it’s not that we receive it and happen to draw from him). The turning away is because of the gift (or more specifically, because how our hearts receive the gift). We can become so consumed with the good gift that we forget about the Giver. We belittle the Giver as we over-inflate the gift.
When this happens the gift was still good. It’s our response that was opposite of what was supposed to happen. To compare, this is similar to the biblical concept of law and sin. Although we aren’t saved by obeying the law, the law in the Bible is still good in itself. Through it God guides us. But the law results in our sin when our sinful nature hears the law and “seizes an opportunities” to disobey the law. Paul explained it this way:
“What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means!…But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness” (Romans 7:7-9).
So it is with God’s gifts. Like God’s law, God’s gifts are always good and can lead us to glorify him (see Path Two). But on the other hand, our sin can seize an opportunity through God’s gifts and cause us to forsake the Giver and worship the gift (see Hosea 2:5-8; Deuteronomy 8:11-14).
Path Two: Draw Nearer to God Because of the Gift
The second path we can tread down as we receive a gift from God is the opposite: we draw nearer to God. One avenue leaves us further away from God, this one brings us closer to him.
In both instances the gift is objectively the same. So is the Giver. It’s our hearts that can rotate the 180 degrees. And like Path One, the drawing near in this option isn’t merely adjacent to the gift—it’s not just that we happen to receive a gift and happen to be close to the Giver. Rather, the drawing near is because of the gift. We focus on the gift in such a way that draws us closer to God.
Do We Devalue the Gifts to Avoid Idolatry?
But to many of us, this emphasis on God’s gifts makes us fretful, doesn’t it? After all, we don’t want to become idolaters! So the mistake we often fall into when we consider this second path is thinking that being overly positive about the gift is dangerous. Essentially many of us think we must devalue the gift in order for it to not lead us down path one. Is this true?
In one sense, perhaps. We know that compared to having God, the gift doesn’t compare (see Philippians 3:7-8). We do well therefore to keep the gift in proper perspective. We shouldn’t so value it to make it compete with God. Realizing this allows us to not idolize the gift, running down the first path and turning away from God.
But mostly the idea that we must devalue the gift to keep us from idolatry is incorrect. It’s not how we should think about God’s gift.
Ask yourself: What teenager values the gift of a car for their sixteenth birth more from their parents. The teenager who gets the car, loves it, says an exhilarating “thank you,” and has a stronger, happier relationship with their parents because of the car? Or the teenager who happily receives the car, but then doesn’t say thank you and never wants to talk to the parents again because they’re so consumed with the car?
We could say in one sense that the first teenager “devalued” the car compared to the second teenager. But wouldn’t that be misleading? It’s true the first teenager didn’t allow the car to consume them and wreck their relationship with their parents, but they didn’t devalue the gift. They rather properly valued it—and one could even argue they valued it more for what it was. They received and valued the gift in such a way that it fueled their joy and the joy of their parents.
The Joyful and God-Glorifying Path
So it is to be with us Christians as we receive our daily gifts and blessings from God. Moment by moment, God lavishes his “good and perfect gifts” upon us (James 1:17), and through them we can either 1) turn further from God because of how we receive the gifts, or 2) draw closer to God because of how we receive the same gifts.
And as seen in the teenager-car situation above, only one path is joyful and God-glorifying.
With those two paths laid, the next post will consider ways how we can daily strive to receive God’s gifts like this.
