I remember listening to a sermon by Joseph Prince "Why Christians Do Not Receive the Blessings of God". He explained that it's because they are trying to earn their blessings and quoted Romans 4:13.
This really does sound like the story of my life: my subconscious mind is completely conditioned to deserve things. We are all like this in fact. This is why Christians run around church like crazy people; trying to be someone they're not, convincing themselves they're serving God, doing perfunctory routines and duties. Come on, admit it, you've been there!
It seems that when we are busy with church stuff, we are better able to believe that God will take care of us and meet our needs (a viewpoint encouraged by the pastor). But as soon as we stop serving, tithing - we are reduced to insecure, nervous wrecks! Well I know I was!
This whole concept of effort-and-reward is built into our lower nature and it has to be de-constructed through the message of grace.
Do you know what it is? It is pride. God resists the proud. We become proud when we seek after the power of God so we can fulfil all the criteria, tick all the boxes of how we should look, think and behave. Then, we feel as if we will then meet God's requirements.
Have you noticed how ardently believers seek advice on how to stop sinning? They become obsessed with it to the point whereby they fail to appreciate what Jesus has done for them already. Do they know that God imputes no sin to them? They want to stop sinning, not out of their love for God, but out of sheer terror at the thought of the consequences of continuing to sin. We want to deserve things so that we can rest in the fact that we had something to do with it. The Gospel completely takes away our involvement in such matters. God shows His love for us in that when we were still sinners - He sent Jesus to die for us.
We become ashamed of our guilty past and believe that seeking power from God so we can achieve things, will take away that shame. In our minds we have this mental picture of a set of scales that is totally weighed down by sins of omission and commission from the past. There is this subconscious impulse to redress this imbalance through things we do for God. That's when we start prattling on with the, "Use me God" and "Fill me with Your power Lord so I can be a vessel of your mighty power". If we knew God accepted us as we are - I'd bet all of that Christian claptrap would stop! I remember thinking to myself at one stage, "I just want to be normal". I got fed-up with this predictable idea of what a "good" Christian should look and sound like.
We want people to pat us on the back and complement us on how good we are. Why can't we just rest in the fact that we don't have to change anything, except our guilty conscience, when it comes to being blessed by God?
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