God is our Father, not our storekeeper
It is easy to slip into thinking of God as owing us something. We can get upset if we have worked hard to be faithful, we have been generous, we have served God, and then we don’t get something we prayed for or wanted. We can think that we have a right for God to give us what we want. Worse, we can get angry with God when we don’t get what we want.
This is the language of being a customer at a store. You know the idea: I give the storekeeper my money, and then I should get what I paid for in return. It’s a simple transaction. If we give the money, but the storekeeper doesn’t give me my goods, then I have the right to be upset!
There is something terribly wrong with thinking about God like this. It forgets that God has already done something of infinite value for us in Jesus. We never deserved that. We deserved judgement, yet if we trust in Jesus, we receive grace upon grace. All that we have that is good in this life is a gift and better than we deserve.
The customer way of thinking also overvalue our faithfulness and worthiness. How can we think that our faithful living means God is obligated to give us what we want? Even the best things we do are full of impure motives. We don’t deserve anything from God at all. What we get is a gift, not a right.
A much better way of thinking about our relationship with God is as a child of God, not a customer. We have a family relationship because of Jesus, not a customer-storekeeper arrangement. Real, healthy relationships do not work on a transactional basis. We don’t count up the good things we have done for our wives or parents and then say that we deserve the same level of good things ourselves. No, we know we are already loved by God. He has demonstrated that to us in Jesus. We strive to be faithful, not because it will mean we get what we want, but because we want to honour the One who loves us more than we could ever know.
So when we ask God for something in prayer, and He chooses not to give it to us, that doesn’t mean He is failing in his role as storekeeper. It means that, as our Father, He has decided our request is not what we need at the moment. It is a refusal out of love, not deserving, and not duty.
God loves us more than we could ever know. Let’s not reduce God to some machine or someone who owes us something.