You have probably seen TV commercials for a medicine or treatment that describe a product while showing people doing lots of neat things as if the medicine or treatment would turn their lives totally around. As the joy and wonder on their faces is being shown and the product is described, there is something else going on in the commercial.
An unseen speaker in the background is chatting away about the negative impact you might experience as a result of taking the product, especially those with certain health issues contained in a long list being quietly expressed. These medicines and treatments made to help you, could result in bad reactions or in some cases even death.
Seeking God to improve our lives is a much different story. God is with us always. When we turn to Him in all things, nothing can destroy us, as we are His Eternal Children. Whatever happens to us in this worldly life is overcome in our resurrection. No “Warning” is necessary.
We hear in Romans 6:4-6, “Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.”
An interesting way of looking at prayer and our life in Christ is shown in this story by an anonymous source. “Once a man was asked, ‘what did you gain by regularly praying to God?’ The man replied, ‘nothing, but let me tell you what I lost: Anger, ego, greed, depression, insecurity, and fear of death.’ Sometimes the answer to our prayers is not gaining but losing; which ultimately is the gain.” (Anonymous)
Choosing not to seek the Lord in our lives is often for one of two reasons: 1) We just can’t believe in something we are not able to see and 2) We don’t feel worthy of God’s kind of love because of our sinful nature. In both cases we are ‘throwing out the baby with the bathwater.’ God’s longing for our friendship with Him is completely ignored.
In Acts 17:24-28, we are reminded: “God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things.
And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being….”
We have nothing to do with our created life. While our own fathers and mothers brought us into this world, all humanity has and will be brought into this world by our Father God. We must recognize our deep blood connection with the Father and understand that He wants a close relationship with His created children. He created us and provides all things for us eternally.
