Intentions.

Lately, I’ve been considering something. When I pray to God and tell Him that I love Him and am so thankful for all that He does for me, what are my intentions? Am I loving God for who He is, or am I loving Him because of what He does for me?

God has given me so very much. I spent my whole last post talking about all the blessings that He has given me, and I’m pretty sure that doesn’t even begin to skim the surface. Typically when I pray, I am either thanking God for what He has done, or asking Him to do something more for me. When I think back, it seems like a lot of my prayers are simply focused on asking God to use all His power to help me; either thanking Him for what He has done, or asking Him to solve even more of my never ending problems. Even When I pray to thank God for things like His love and wisdom, I feel like it’s typically because I am seeing myself benefitting from these attributes of Him.

The more I consider this idea, the more confused I become. I don’t want to have a faith where my main motivation is simply the benefits I reap for myself. I want to have a relationship with God where HE is front and center, and I am simply on the sidelines. I think I need to truly get it through my head that this is not about me. God has blessed me with so many things not to benefit myself, but to share it with others. This life isn’t about me one single bit! Rather, it is all about being a servant, following in Jesus’ example, and serving everyone around me for Christ. That is what matters, not how much my relationship with God can benefit me.

Blessings.

God has completely showered me in blessings – all different kinds of them. Some are the ordinary objects that I use every day, like my car or my house. Then there are the intangible things that I’ve been blessed with, like my education or a great relationship with a good friend. Both of these categories include objects that play a role in my everyday life, and most of the time I tend to take them for granted. I get comfortable with these blessings and begin to view them as assets and necessities rather than for what they truly are: blessings, gifts, and things that I don’t deserve. I am not entitled to them, and in true reality I have no ownership over them. God can easily take them all away if He wanted; they don’t fully belong to me.

However, I am frequently reminded that there is still one more type of blessing that God has showered upon me. These are the ones that I don’t even understand why God would give them to me; the things I couldn’t possibly have without God giving them to me. These are all the attributes of God that I am blessed to experience every single day that are completely rooted in God. They are things like His love, grace, peace, mercy, provision and so many more. When you seek Christ you will find these blessings in full abundance, and God gives them so generously. These blessings are found fully in Christ, but He Has also blessed us with the opportunity to experience them in other ways as well. Like when my parents or close friends show me love, God is showing me love through that as well.

God has given me more blessings than I could possibly imagine, and the best of them come from Him. While the phone, clothes and friends are all blessings, nothing can compare to the gifts God showers upon me purely out of love.