To make Jesus merely my personal assistant is one of the dark, sinful trends of my heart. I fall prey to the mechanisms of Western individualism in this regard but such a tendency is not restricted to the rise of our societal values. The Israelites succumbed to the same inclinations long ago. But let's stay in the present for now.
One of the things I hear most often from my friends who are not professing Christians is, "I can't believe in a god that/of/who ______." There is a Biblical answer, however complicated, to fulfill whatever is in the blank (for example, see my previous piece on why wrath and love go hand in hand in God's character). But the statement is flawed from its inception. The heart of this statement is that we're not ready to worship a god that might contradict some part of who we are.
Do not mistake me: it is not wrong to have questions about God. How we steward those questions is what can be right or wrong. In the question above, this person has put the part of who they are that they fear God may contradict onto the throne of their life, a throne that only God Himself is worthy enough and able to occupy. When we do this, we are actually worshipping ourselves, not Him.
Western individualism places such a strong emphasis on discovering what you believe and holding onto it with a death grip that we leave no room for God to contradict us. This is the litmus test, because even devout Christians (like myself all too often) can find themselves falling into this trap. I have to constantly scrutinize my walk: if God never contradicts me, I may be worshipping an idealized version of myself without knowing it.
If left unchecked, this leads to a dramatic role reversal with God. If He's not on the throne of our life, and consequently contradicting us at least occasionally, He is by default in a place that occupies something less than a constant presence in our consciousness. We take Him out when we need Him and make our love for Him conditional. No matter what He's done for us in the past, we only care about what He's done for us lately.
Like I said, the Israelites in the desert struggled with the exact same thing. Psalm 78 puts it better than I could:
"Yet they kept on sinning against him,
rebelling against the Most High in the desert.
They stubbornly tested God in their hearts,
demanding the foods they craved.
They even spoke against God himself, saying,
'God can’t give us food in the wilderness.
Yes, he can strike a rock so water gushes out,
but he can’t give his people bread and meat.'" (Psalm 78:17-20 NLT)
At this point in their journey out of slavery, God has already sent all 10 plagues on Egypt, moved on Pharaoh's heart to release them, protected them with a pillar of fire, split the Dead Sea so they could pass through, collapsed that same sea again on their pursuing enemies and made water flow from a rock. And yet they doubt.
But are we so different? Has God not done things equally as miraculous in each of our lives, (not least of which, calling us out of sin and in His marvelous light)? And yet we doubt too.
In contrast to the One who showed the utmost meaning of unconditional love when He went to the cross, we are all too apt to make our love of God conditional based on what He has done for us recently and whether He may be contradicting us or not. Tim and Kathy Keller's response from their Psalms devotional is worth quoting here: "But God created the universe with a word of his power, and even the galaxies are like dust before him. Is this the kind of person you ask into your life to be your personal assistant?"
The answer is, of course, a resounding "NO." Quite contrarily, the nature and character of this god, the one true God, necessitates a relationship with each of His creatures and subjugation of each area of our lives to His will.
This may sound difficult, but we have a (literally) perfect example of how it's done. Jesus exemplified it for us when He subjugated His will to His Father's and went to the cross on our behalf. Matthew's gospel tells us that three times (26:44) Jesus confessed His will to the Father, but resolved to have the Father's will come to pass no matter what (verses 39, 42, 44).
This is what it takes to put God on on the throne of our lives, where He belongs: repeated confession of our desire, but subjecting that desire to the will of our Heavenly Father. My church's upcoming conference (Wave Conference) has a theme that is on point: "This changes everything."
Who God is and what He has done for us on the cross necessitates that we surrender and subjugate every area of our lives to Him. It calls to mind that wonderful hymn from Isaac Watts: "Love so amazing, so divine, / Demands my soul, my life, my all."
Only by doing this will we promote Him from our personal assistant to His proper divine place as Lord of our lives. And only there, where He can contradict us, can He truly change us to become like Him.
