Esther Carpenter

Do You Want What You Deserve?

I was happily munching away on my breakfast and listening to music on YouTube when an ad interrupted my “joyful noise” and a woman started telling me all about an accident she was in that was her fault, but really wasn’t… and I tried to tune her out, hoping her rant would soon end so I could go back to my music.

Before I go any further, yes, I know there are ways to listen to music that are ad-free. But I have not yet sat myself down to figure out how to go about creating such a thing, so I put up with the ads. Andrew says I have an incredible ability to tune out what I want to, so maybe that also speaks to why I never get around to the aforementioned project.

Anyway, back to the lady in the ad. I half listened to her tale of woe and how she filed some paperwork that would benefit her even though the accident was her fault. Then the tone of her voice changed, and I am brought back out of sleep mode. I tune in to hear what important information was coming next.

“I got what I deserved,” she said in a tone of triumph.

Her words strike a nerve in my soul, and before I know it, I am holding an internal interview with this lady.

How do you know you got what you deserved?

What determines what you deserve?

Who determines what you deserve?

I’d like to hold a two-way conversation with her rather than the lopsided one in my mind. Since I can’t, I will ask you for your opinion on the matter.

Why do we only think we get what we deserve when it is a good thing? In this lady’s case, it was $150,000.

What if she had had to pay the $150,000 to someone else? Would she still feel she had gotten what she deserved? She had admitted that technically the accident was her fault.

So why did she feel she still deserved the money?

What about the person who DID have to cough up that money? Were they sitting at their dining room table with their friends saying, “I got what I deserved”?

What is it inside us that when we are given something we perceive as good we feel like we are entitled to it?

And, on the flip side, it is much harder to find someone facing adversity who will say, in the same tone of voice, “I got what I deserved.”

Why do we feel like we deserve good things and not bad?

Job spoke to this subject when he asked his wife the question, “Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?”

Job’s wife never asked him to curse God when life was going well for them. But when the tables turned, she did what I am tempted to do sometimes. She decided God wasn’t worth serving after all since he let her and her husband suffer for no good reason.  Job may have been the only one with boils, but they suffered the loss of all the other calamities together. And as many a woman can testify; a sick husband is no picnic either!

It sounds like somewhere she too had gotten the idea that as long as she and Job were living with integrity God owed them good things.

Could it be that the reason she and I think we deserve good things but not evil is that we have the wrong opinion of ourselves? An exalted one, perhaps?

Do I believe that God owes me good things because I am trying to live in obedience to him? After all, I am required to put others ahead of myself which is often inconvenient. I also say “No” to all sorts of activities that my flesh desires “because I am a Christian.” Do I think I deserve a reward for denying myself?

Those words bring a terrible stench to my nose. I want to erase them because they don’t speak well of me at all. They reek of pride and arrogance. They are also completely focused on me and therein lies the problem.

God did not create me to enjoy a life focused on myself and the good things that I think I deserve. Self-focus is a sinful focus. And the Psalmist has something to say about that.

Psalm 103:10 says, “He does not punish us for all our sins, he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve.”

It sounds like maybe we don’t want to get what we deserve.

God created each of us so that we could serve his purposes and bring him glory. Because he is the I AM he has perfect judgment and knows exactly what each person needs or doesn’t need at any given moment. He is also a Father of love, and he often gives us good things to enjoy. He wants us to smile in appreciation, recognize the love that motivated the giving, and gratefully accept his beautiful gifts. This blesses his heart.

But never, ever, does he want us to think he owes us only good things.

None of God’s children will stand before Him on the judgment day and say, “I got what I deserved.” There will be no pride, no self-centered thinking, and no sense of self-righteousness in our words on that day. We will only stand there, ever so thankful that we chose to trust the One who watched over us every moment of every day and lovingly dealt out what was best for us. Sometimes we perceived it as good and sometimes as bad. But never, on any occasion did we get what we deserved.

I’m sure the person who scribbled down that ad never dreamed it would ever trigger such a response as mine. And I am not writing this to criticize that person or the one who was doing the speaking. It’s just that God can use even an annoying little ad on YouTube to get my attention and teach me something about himself. And about me. Thanks for listening as I tried to sort it out in my head! Now I’d like to hear your thoughts!

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