Today’s reading: Isaiah 9; Hebrews 13
The life I default to wanting is not the life God is calling us to as Christians.
Growing up in America, I have very much bought into the “American Dream,” and probably much more so than I even realize. I’ve lived my whole life in a culture that screams that hard work gets you more money, more money gets you nice things, and nice things give you peace, security, comfort, and happiness. I still remember, when I was in college, before I came to know Christ, all of my thoughts and goals for my career were tied to how much money I could make. I didn’t feel the need to be rich, but my self-worth was very much tied to how successful I was, and I saw social/financial status as an irrefutable way to declare to the world that I was valuable. I truly believed that once I graduated and was making enough money, my worries and fears, my relational issues and alienation, my depression, and everything else would go away, and I would just be comfortable and happy from that point forward.
How silly is that? And yet, despite how silly it is when you say it out loud, how many of us operate day in and day out as though this is how things work?
It is easy to buy into this lie because we want peace, we want comfort, we want purpose, we want significance, we want security, and everything else that our culture tells us wealth and success can give us. Even if we recognize that career and social status won’t provide these things, it is easy to still want them and look for them out of life. I think this is why, as unbiblical as it is, the prosperity gospel, health and wealth preaching, is so popular. It may not be true, but it promises the American Dream without the hard work, and since it’s backed by God, as long as you have enough faith, you can bank on it being permanent. I certainly get why it’s appealing, but something being appealing doesn’t make it true...
Hebrews 13 is a good foil against this kind of thinking and expectation for the Christian. As the author of Hebrews is wrapping up the letter, he gives a smattering of practical thoughts and instructions to his readers. Among them he tells his readers, “Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we can confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?’” The author calls us to keep our lives free from the love of money. He does not tell us to keep our lives free from money, but to keep our lives free from the love of it, and to instead be content with what we have. Far from health and wealth type teaching, which says that if you believe enough God will give you great wealth, the author tells us that, because we can count on God to always be with us and never forsake us, we don’t need to yearn after wealth like the world does, and should instead be content with what we have. Having the Lord in our corner doesn’t supply us with great personal wealth, but it should free us from the felt need for such wealth, because, if the Lord is my helper, what can man do to me? Or what could the world do to me? Or what accident could happen that the Lord was unaware of? Because I know the Lord, I don’t need to be consumed with money the way the world does, and I am free, instead, to be content with what I have.
As he continues he says, “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.” A big part of the reason we find our culture’s promises so appealing is that we were created for the kinds of purpose, significance, permanence, security, etc. that are promised. What we are experiencing now is not what God intended and designed for us, but is the result of the Fall and living under the world’s system which is under the power of the evil one. So we yearn for those things because we were created for those things, but as Christians, we should recognize that we will not find them here. What we are yearning for can never be found or satisfied in this life, but is waiting for us in the life to come. So much of sin is convincing us to run after finding/creating this lasting city rather than looking to the one God has prepared for us.
It is important for us to realize that the desires for these things are not wrong; they exist because God created us for them, but as Christians, we don’t need to be consumed with trying to recreate them like those who don’t know the Lord. While we have no lasting city now, we know that these desires will ultimately be fulfilled in eternity, in the city that is to come, and in the time until we enter that lasting city, we have the promises of the Lord operative in our lives. He will never leave us nor forsake us, so we can truly be content with what we have, trusting in the Lord to provide what we need, while we look toward, and live for, the glory of the life to come.
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