God Motivation and the Fair Devil

    May God be gracious to us and bless us
        and make his face to shine upon us,
    that your way may be known on earth,
        your saving power among all nations.
    Let the peoples praise you, O God;
        let all the peoples praise you!
(Psalm 67:1-3)

It makes a lot of sense that we would ask God for things.  In fact, we're told to bring our requests before Him.  We can look through the Bible and see how He's heard people's prayers and responded positively, and maybe we've seen that a good deal in our own lives.  But it's not just that God has a good reputation for being a giving God.  Since He's the God who made it all and has it all, the One who never runs dry and even makes bread and fish in a basket keep filling up from underneath as quickly as someone can grab from the top, we can believe that He's got more than leftovers to offer. 

All those things are true; the Bible attests to them.  There's more to the story, however.  Why should we make requests of God?  What's our end game?  We get a statement on what it's not supposed to be from the book of James when he writes, You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions (James 4:3).  So it's wrong if our asking is all about us having more in order for us to run off with what God gives and waste it on the trivial.  Kids show us both the beauty of faith and the folly of that kind of self-absorption all at once.  We saw a bit of the latter at work earlier this summer at the State Fair.  It was a fun day overall, but one of the low points for me was the time around the kid rides or little amusement park that they had set up.  The whole thing is a racket (just let daddy vent a bit here, OK?).  You go in and buy tickets for these rides, paying about $1.50 each.  But, mind you, one ticket will buy you nothing in there...nothing.  Every ride costs at least two tickets.  And from the moment you walk in, the kids are ravenous and cannot get enough.  Their only concern is doing as much as they possibly can, and they become a little bit more engrossed in their little passions with each step through the place.  It's ugly and papa is so glad when it's time to remove ourselves from the clutches of the devil and move on to things like $6 hotdogs.  I digress.  But I say all that to illustrate that the way in which our kids receive and spend their tickets at the fair is not what we want our lives to look like as we would receive and "spend" the gifts we receive from God.

Notice what the psalmist says after he asks for blessings from the Lord.  He essentially says, "Give these, Lord, SO THAT people are going to see how incredible you are as a God who does everything the right way, giving salvation to people as You go.  I want more praise from more people to go to you, God!"  What the writer desired was not for what he received to terminate on himself but on the same God who gave to him.  That's what we need to think about as we ask for God's blessings.  We must be thinking about how we can use what He gives to invest in His glorification and not our glutting.  That's right at the heart of God motivation.