Seeking the Giver

In a devotional last fall, Paul David Tripp offered a healthy caution about the danger of treating our Heavenly Father as a cosmic vending machine. Tripp’s counsel was a timely reminder for me, and I hope it is for you as well: “Rather than seeking the Giver for the gifts that he can provide, seek the Giver himself.” Yes, I need to hear that.

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God, the Vending Machine

By Paul David Tripp

A very wealthy man once invited me to dinner at a fancy restaurant. During the meal, he shared something heart-breaking: “I don’t know who my real friends are. Because I am rich, I don’t know if people want to be around me because they like me and care about me or because they think I can do things for them. I live wondering all the time if people want me or if they just want my wallet.”

I have thought about that conversation many times. First, it convicted me horizontally to see people as people, not by their role in my life, what they can do for me, or their status and title.

But I was also convicted vertically. Is this how I treat the richest Person I know–the King of kings and Lord of lords?

It’s tempting for us to love the lavish things the Giver so generously blesses us with more than we love him. When we do this, we turn God into nothing more than a vending machine. We put in a couple of prayer coins and press the “amen” button with the expectation that God will give us what we have set our hearts on.

In this way prayer, which seems to be our most direct Godward act, can actually be idolatrous. If the thing that draws us into prayer is not a love for God and a surrender to his will (“your kingdom come, your will be done”), but rather is dominated by requests for the delivery of things that have captured our hearts, then what seems like an act of worship of the Creator is really an act of worshiping the creation.

Rather than seeking the Giver for the gifts that he can provide, seek the Giver himself. I love how David pens it in Psalm 27:4:

“One thing have I asked of the Lord,

    that will I seek after:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

    all the days of my life,

to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord

    and to inquire in his temple.”

If you love the Giver, then you will love his will, prize his commands, seek his glory, and trust he will meet your needs. If you love the Giver, then you will surrender your allegiance to your little kingdom of one and give yourself to the greater purposes of his Kingdom.

If you love the Giver, you don’t demand that he serve you, but you make sacrifices in service of him. If you love the Giver, your life is not shaped and directed by “Today, I want” but by “What does God want of me today?”