Have you ever had a personal prayer time where your thoughts seem to wander repeatedly? Has it ever gotten so bad that you’ve given up the prayer time and gone straight to your Bible reading, only to have your reading for that day completely align with what you thought had been troubling during prayer? This is what happened this morning for me.
To be totally honest, I began the day frustrated and in a bad mood. The place had not cooled down much below 28C by the time I woke up, and it had been at 31C when I went to bed. So sleep was sweaty even with the fans going and the windows open. Welcome to the Okanagan in the summertime. Welcome to life with rising electrical rates going beyond current affordability. The air conditioning unit sits idle as a result, but if it had been running, would only have dropped temperatures to 25/26C itself due to repairs and slightly botched reinstallation two years ago. So this was what greeted me at 7am when I wanted to start my day at 8am.
The frustrations continued as I was met by tech support that couldn’t review past case numbers before firing off stock answers to me! I wrote back asking to talk to a human via email instead of a robot reading scripts. Then I had a brief discussion about writing honest book reviews and being slammed for them, or writing blog posts and being slammed for those. Breakfast came and I was grateful that temperatures inside were down to 26C. A wind came up and I turned off all but one fan, to let the wind change the air without increasing my electrical bill.
Time came for my personal quiet time and I brought God my frustrations. I was asking for His peace and for His guidance, while stray thoughts about the conflict in Israel, false prophets, and other thoughts kept interrupting. The final thought to disrupt my prayer time was a brief daydream about being in the office of one of the current pillow prophets out there, and talking about (read, arguing about) preaching what God wanted shared versus what the people would buy. The guy kept arguing that he had to share what sells, and that the hard word, the word that would bring about positive change in God’s people, was NOT what sells! In this brief daydream I was walking out of his office when I turned around and asked him point-blank, “Who is the god you really serve?” Finally, all these interruptions themselves got frustrating and I opened my eyes and turned to today’s passage in Genesis, chapter 25.
Genesis 25 would prove to be another chapter half-full with geneology-type data, and then I found myself reading the passage where Esau sells his birthright for a bowl of soup! Suddenly I became aware of what that last interruption in my prayer was about. It could be safe to say that I brought my frustrations to God, and He in turn shared one of His own with me! What I thought was another prayer-time interruption was God unloading on me the way I was unloading on Him. God is looking at these high-profile false prophets and asking who they really serve. To Him, they have sold their birthright for earthly, temporal gain.
That was a wince moment to say the least! As an author and writer, I read how-to’s of the craft every now and then, and on Sunday I read the latest article on selling lots of books. The first point in the list was about researching what’s trending and write what people will buy, write what people are wanting to read. If I was to write for my industry, that advice would work, but because I write primarily in the Christian/Spiritual Growth/Personal Growth genre, this advice is completely and totally wrong! God has gifted me with the ability to see what is coming down the pipe, and tasked me with warning those that information affects. Such warnings are not only unpopular in today’s society, but even scoffed and chaffed at. People don’t want to be told that in order to avoid a potential mishap, they need to shape up some area of their life. Instead, they want to be told that life is only going to get better, that there is gold on the horizon and the path to untold blessings has been paved if only they will lay claim to all God has for them. The message God has given me to write is therefore, not one that sells easily.
“Write what sells”. . . “Who is the god you really serve?” As authors and writers, we need to ensure that we are not selling our birthright for a pot of soup. We need to ensure that we are being true to the calling and message God has given us and not worry about what will or won’t sell on the market as a result. The almighty dollar can trap even God’s messengers, as illustrated in the story of Balaam and his talking donkey in Numbers 22. When the earthly messengers of God, whether they be Pastors, Teachers, Prophets, or Watchmen begin to chase after what sells instead of faithfully delivering the message God has given them, money becomes their god. They risk trading their eternal reward in heaven for a rusting, disappearing reward here on earth.
The trade-offs to the child of God are just as massive as the trade-off for Esau when he sold his birthright for a bowl of soup. Temporary earthly gain is no match for what awaits those who are obedient to God’s call on their lives. As Christ said in His own words: Mark 8:36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
That passage goes on to talk about being ashamed of Him before men, and God’s response to that when Christ returns with all His angels. Interestingly enough, social media has become the primary target for attempting to guilt Christians into “not being ashamed” by engaging in spammy tactics to show the world they are not ashamed. Christ did not engage in spammy tactics when He walked this earth. His interaction with those who did not know Him was far from spammy. But this truth is lost on those who regularly post, “If you love God, click like and share”, “those who are not ashamed of Christ will like and share”, “if you like and share this post, blessings will come to you”, etcetera! We are told in Scripture to have an answer ready for every man who asks us about our faith. Our faith, according to Scripture is to be lived out in our everyday choices, prompting people to see that we are different and ask why we are different. Our lifestyle and our answer to that lifestyle should point to Christ unashamedly! All we do when we spam people’s inboxes and newsfeeds is turn them off, particularly if our own lifestyle does not show Christ making a difference in us. When we are more concerned with the almighty dollar and tailoring our message so that the dollar is earned, in effect, we are showing shame for the message God has given us, and we bring contempt upon the name of Christ. It is far more shameful for the man or woman of God to water down the message so it sells, than to boldly proclaim the message God has told them to give, as uncomfortable as it might be, and no matter the flack that might result.
“Who is the god you really serve?”
