ARE YOU LOOKING FOR GOD'S FAVOR?

Have you ever thought that the things happening in your life means a favor or a disfavor of God?

For a long time I have thought that when something bad happens to me, maybe I did not pray harder, or I have not really been faithful with my devotion. I also came to a point of thinking that what is happening to me and with the people around me is the measure of my faith and their faith. Bad things means I am not so faithful, good things mean I have been faithful enough and God is happy with me.

For a long time, the picture of God in my brain is like the Greek gods and Roman gods. It was a god that you needed to please in order for him to bestow the blessings you are craving for. Bible reading, prayer, and personal devotion became a routine to please God. My goal of all these spiritual disciplines was just to always be right with God.

When I went to the book of Job, I was amazed to find myself relating to Job’s friends thought, I was good enough; I thought, I was faithful; I thought; I would be Job. Yes, the reality brought me into a deep questioning of my understanding of God.

Job 2:10 says, “He replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” In all this, Job did not sin in what he said. This was Job’s answer to the urging of his wife to curse God because of what is happening in his life. And later on in the narrative you will his friends trying their best to make Job repent of his sins. He is trying to put Job in a condition of sin, that is why his life became such a mess.

All those times, I was thinking that God would only give comfort and answered prayers, I was missing the link between God and faith. What is that link I was missing? The understanding that God is Love. But that love does not mean taking you out of trouble and treats you like a queen. God’s love is not the picture of taking away the suffering and puts you in the pedestal. God’s love is in giving Jesus to us to live a perfect life, the life that we fail to live from the very start. Jesus’ life here on earth was not a life of ease, comfort, luxury, and pedestal. His life was a normal life of a poor, unrecognized, not so attractive, betrayed, forsaken, hated, and rejected. Jesus’ life was all the situations that I dreaded the most. Jesus’ life is the life that I would think that God is not happy with me and is not blessing me. Jesus’ life was a life of endurance, patience, long-suffering, joy, peace, and kindness amidst hunger, poverty, hatred, pain, shame, and suffering.

Christ endured everything a human being could ever think of experiencing. Can you imagine the magnitude of this statement? All those times, I was feeling so inconvenient, not even suffering, I already thought God has forsaken me, when in fact, Christ, the beloved son of the Father went worse than my situation.

What is the measurement of convenience? I don’t know. But this I know that today, my convenience or inconvenience is not the measurement of the love of God. Today, my poverty or abundance is not the measurement of my faith. Today, I know that God loves me not because of my circumstance but because of the greatest favor given to me--Jesus Christ. Only Jesus is the measurement of my favor in front of God. Not of anything I do or want to ever do that will bring me any favor in the sight of my God except the works of Jesus on my behalf, except for the life He lived that I may live. This love has changed me and I have never appreciated my life in Jesus ever than this time when I finally understood His love.

Yes, I will suffer, be hated, be rejected or be joyful, abundant, successful; but, it is not the measure of God’s love. The measure of God’s love for me will always be in the love of Christ for me. Before what happens to me here in this world is very important. Today, what happens to the work of Christ is much more important, may it be in my soul or the souls of others.

Friends, a growing faith from physical to spiritual eyesight is what Christ is opening for your today. Would you love to take enter in the journey?