“What is in this for me?” Do you ever wonder? If we keep score, we may well have a mental record of all we have done for God. Then when something goes wrong in our lives we are inclined to lament, “After all I did for God, he should not have let me suffer this loss.” This is a quid pro quo understanding of relationship with God. We give to him and do for him, obligating him to give to us and do for us what we want. It turns out God is not gameshow host Monty Hall and he is not playing the game, “Let’s Make a Deal.”
Like the disciples of the New Testament, Abram left everything to follow God’s direction. So what did God owe Abram? At one point his nephew Lot was captured by enemy armies. After Abram went to war and retrieved Lot, the great patriarch of Israel tithed the spoils of his victory to Melchizedek, King of Salem, and priest of God Most High. For all that Abram had recovered, he still had no heir. God’s promises to him remained unfulfilled.
Right on time, God came to Abram in a vision. First God allayed his fears. Then God promised protection and personal provision. God told Abram that his reward for following him was nothing less than the relationship with God which sustained him and his family. Abram is honest with God saying, “You have given me no children.” God pointed Abram to the stars and said, “You will have as many descendants as there are visible stars in the sky." Abram could have rolled his eyes and said, “I doubt it.” But instead, he believed God and God credited his faith to him as righteousness, right relationship with him.
Abram’s pattern becomes our pattern. It turns out that God is not in our debt, nor can he be. Nothing we do for God obligates him. Everything we have, including our families, comes from his good hand. God himself is our reward. What we get for following God is God himself. He is our “very great reward." Do we believe him? Is God enough for us? God is the deal. He is the whole deal, the real deal. God is the only deal. If God is not enough for us, no thing ever will be.
