SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM: Why the faithless continue to test God, and why it fails

My father—shown in this recent photograph in his beloved 4-wheeler—is a real character and a great storyteller. Throughout our young lives, my brother and sisters and I always enjoyed hearing his stories about growing up. He only seemed to remember the funniest and the most entertaining, rarely the bad things and the hard times, even though I know he had many. He was born roughly in the middle of a family of 13 children, and the son of a coal miner who somehow managed to raise his brood on a few dollars a day in the midst of the Great Depression.

One of his favorite stories about his father, my “Grandpa Buff,” was the one he told about a cousin of his who suddenly decided he didn’t want to work anymore, and would put God's promises to the test. He quit his job and started showing up at the homes of relatives right about mealtime. Very early in his new endeavor, this cousin arrived at Dad’s house for supper. He knocked on the door right around dinner time, was welcomed in, and when it was time for the family to sit down for supper, he headed for the table as well.

Now it’s important to understand that my grandfather (shown in the photo with my grandmother) was a fairly devout man, and married to an extremely devout wife. Both fully appreciated and understood the message of the Gospels. But my grandfather was also a very hardworking man who had little time for foolishness, and wasted no time in pointing it out whenever he encountered it. They also knew what this cousin had been up to...using his laziness as an excuse to bend Scripture and essentially blackmail his devout Christian relatives into feeding him. His shenanigans were about to come to an end.

As his cousin was helping himself to a seat at the table, my grandfather asked him what he was doing.

The cousin replied, “The Lord said He would provide for my needs, and He sent me here. You believe the words of the Lord, don’t you?”

“I sure do,” said my grandfather. “But you might want to pray a bit harder for better directions. I believe the Lord just sent you to the wrong house.” And he showed his cousin to the door. The other relatives caught wind of my grandfather's actions and soon followed suit.

On a pure laugh-out-loud level, this wasn’t the funniest story my father ever told us, but it did strike a chord with us and left us with a lesson to ponder. We understood that while God is faithful in His promises, we must never foolishly test Him. God does promise to take care of a believer’s daily needs, but it comes with the caveat “Seek first His Kingdom and righteousness,” and only then would those daily needs “...be added to you.”

I had other intentions for this post when I first decided to write it, but as I thought about it, I realized that it was simply a follow-up to the post below, the one dealing with cheap grace. The example of my grandfather’s cousin makes the point very clear, and is yet another example of cheap grace, and a most dangerous one at that. We often claim to believe in God, but without faith...just a simple claim of belief...and then expect God to “prove” Himself to us. Nowhere is this more evident than in some of the skewed ministries we see on television, shows that tell us that God is bound by spiritual laws to deliver on these promises, no matter who the person is, believer or not.

This isn’t an exaggeration, by the way. There are many very prominent and financially-successful TV ministries that operate on this very principle, and they state it regularly in their programs—TV minister Kenneth Copeland being a prime example. The core message of Copeland's show says that we can essentially control God’s power by calling upon these spiritual laws—laws that are higher than God, and therefore He’s bound to honor them, regardless of who’s making the request. This is outrageous, of course, and is nothing short of blasphemous and heretical. And it fails because God will not be mocked or tested.

In the final analysis, there’s only one way to ensure that we don’t fall victim to flawed interpretations and false teachers. Only by studying and knowing the Scriptures, and studying with good, sound teachers, can we come to fully understand and grasp the true will of God. Once we begin moving in the right direction, under the guidance of the Spirit, we free ourselves from the destructive and selfish motives of the flesh, those warped and dangerous ideas that drive us to foolishly test God.