Good Gifts, Celebrating and Sacrificing

I have been slowly but surely working through Piper's Let the Nations Be Glad. A book like this is a good read when it can stay theoretical, when you are comfortably in your homeland pew. But when you're one of those the book is talking about? Well, at some moments it's been an encouragement, at others an exhortation, but most often a shameful mirror, showing a high standard with plenty of room to grow. But all of that is for another time.

There have been a lot of hard-hitting excerpts, but probably none more than the following, which I found incredibly pertinent...

I'll explain first: there is something quite powerful and profound in enjoying life to its fullest and thanking God for it, acknowledging him and glorifying him as the source of all good things. Good food around a picnic table on a breezy summer day with family and friends? Something resonates in our souls: Thank you, God! James 1:17: Every good and perfect gift is from the Father above. Psalm 103:5 He satisfies us with good things. Acts 14:17 He did good by giving you fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.

This ongoing sense of gratitude has been a focus for me in recent years, and I've seen it develop in circles around me as well. As an effort to take nothing for granted, it's an excellent attitude and mind set of praise, giving glory and thanks where it is due.

But this taking pleasure in 'good gifts,' more recently I've felt conflicted about it, and slowly realizing why. If all we do is enjoy life and thank God for it, well, so what? Especially in a wealthy, consumerist, materialist society, this becomes too easy. And eventually it can become a justifiable materialism, a watered down prosperity gospel, a holy coverup of greed, a pious form of gluttony, as we insatiably search for more good gifts to acquire and consume.

The point is, there's more to it all than that. As Piper says better than I do, if the outworking of our faith stops there, maybe it's the gifts we love, and not the Giver.

Glad Suffering Shines Brighter Than Gratitude:

It is true that we should bear testimony to the supremacy of God's goodness by receiving his good gifts with thanksgiving (1 Tim 4:3). But for many Christians this has become the only way they see their lifestyles glorifying God. God has been good to them to give them so much. Therefore, the way to witness to the reality of God is to take and be thankful.

But even though it is true that we should thankfully enjoy what we have, there is a relentless call in the Bible not to accumulate more and more things but to give more and more and to be deprived of things if love demands it...What is clear from the New Testament is that suffering with joy, not gratitude in wealth, is the way the worth of Jesus shines most brightly...

...You cannot show the preciousness of a person by being happy with his gifts. Ingratitude will certainly prove that the giver is not loved, but gratitude for gifts does not prove that the giver is precious. What proves that the giver is precious is the glad-hearted readiness to leave all his gifts to be with him. This is why suffering is so central in the mission of the church. The goal of our mission is that people from all the nations worship the true God. But worship means cherishing the preciousness of God above all else, including life itself. It will be difficult to bring the nations to love God from a lifestyle that communicates a life of things...

It's not a call to feel guilty about receiving good gifts, nor a call to refuse them. It's a call to be vigilant in our love for the Giver, a love that has so little to do with his gifts that we are always ready to gladly leave them behind.