Unthankful Hearts

During a Sunday worship service, our congregation said this prayer of confession in unison: “Gracious God, like many believers before us, we complain when things do not go our way. We want abundance of everything rather than what is sufficient to sustain us. We would rather be elsewhere than where we are at the moment. We would rather have the gifts You give to others than what You provide for us. We would rather have You serve us than serve You. Forgive our lack of gratitude for what You give.” –David C. McCasland (from the Our Daily Bread devotional)

How true that prayer is.  So often we are so focused on what we lack that we forget all that God has given us.  We forget that God will give us everything to do His will (1 Thessalonians 5:24—He who calls you is faithful, and He will do it).  It also shows how weak our flesh is.  We are continually drawn to things of this world that other people have that we do not have.  We forget to delight ourselves in the Lord and so we miss out on God giving us the desires of our heart (Psalm 37:4).

Knowledge of Good and Evil

As part of my training work, I am to read How People Grow by Henry Cloud and Stuart Townsend.  In the part that I read today, they talk about how one of the roles God intended during Creation was that God was the judge of life and we weren't; we were to experience life.  They write, "[God] didn't want humans to 'know' what he knew about evil.

Even though we, as humans, ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we do not and cannot completely comprehend good and evil.  We have finite vision of what is to happen in our lives, linear vision of time, and limited vision of good and evil.  This made me consider:  How can I come before God, knowing that I do not have full knowledge of good and evil, say to God, "This is not good for me, please take it away"?  How can I say to God, "This is good for me, please allow me to have it"?  Or how can I saw to God, "Why are so many bad things happening to me?" How can I say these things if I do not have total knowledge of good and evil?  How do I know whether certain things are truly good or truly bad for me?

It was such a great moment of realization.  How arrogant I had been, thinking I knew what was good and what was bad in my life.  Only God knows.

I was thinking further on this subject and realized that one of the biggest lies Satan can tell us is that we know good and evil or that we are capable of knowing fully about good and evil.  If we believe Him, then we will start to wonder why "bad" things happen to "good" people.  In doing so, we'll be just like Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden and we'll think we completely know good and evil and we'll take things into our own hands instead of trusting the One Who fully knows good and evil and will be with us through everything.