“Thank God.” You ever said that?

Typically, it’s in response to something good that has happened, something you’re grateful for. That is a right and proper response. Being grateful is a lovely state.

I’ve said that numerous times. Last year, I had the amazing privilege of being part of a “prayer boot camp,” a sort of training retreat. The name describes it perfectly. The only real requests the disciples made of Jesus was, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Well, most of what I participated in was being taught to pray. Good, good stuff. I was and am grateful for the experience.

Here’s the danger, though. We can’t imply that God is good only during good times.

Isn’t that our default position? We acknowledge the goodness of God when things are going our way, whatever that means. (The kinda scary implication is that we thank God when we think He’s served us in a fashion that pleases us.) See how dangerous that might be?

It’s that weird performance mentality, y’know? We think that God is blessing us because of our proper thoughts and deeds. We’ve done what we were supposed to do. We’ve read our Bible, we’ve prayed, we’ve encouraged others. We’ve served Him consistently. We’ve given sacrificially. And when our mojo is really working, we may have even talked about our faith with someone who doesn’t have a personal relationship with God. After doing all that, after being such a good Christian, isn’t God obligated to give us reason to feel good?

Conversely, when someone is facing trials or suffering, don’t we think it’s because they’ve done something wrong? Or, personally, when we are hurting, isn’t it God punishing us because we haven’t done the things we were supposed to do … or we’ve done things we shouldn’t have?

We need to be careful here. There is a law of sowing and reaping in the universe … in secular terms, we get back out of life in exact proportion to what we put in. This is true in our relationship with God, too. Sow extravagantly, reap extravagantly. Sow little, reap little.

However – if we aren’t careful, we’ll use this principle as a tool to serve ourselves. It’s like we try to cut a deal with God. We say, “Hey, God. I’ve done the stuff. Don’t You owe me a blessing now? Don’t You think You ought to give me a reason to be thankful?”

It doesn’t work that way. In some fashion, our relationship with God is asymmetrical. There’s no way we can possibly love Him as much as He loved us first. We can respond to that love, but in the flesh we can’t match it.

It’s like this: Praising God can’t be built on the quality of our circumstances. Rather, our praise and gratitude is centered on the God of those circumstances, however good or bad those circumstances may be. This is a challenging and uncomfortable truth.

Basing your gratitude on a situation is a sure-fire way to end up bitter and disillusioned with God. You don’t want that, now do you?

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