What I Owe God and What He Owes Me

As Christians, we often say and easily acknowledge we owe God everything and deserve nothing good. We acknowledge this truth (Job 41:11), but rarely think specifically of what that means. So we live as entitled people of the world rather than grateful people of God when we're indignant that: we have to sit in traffic, there aren't enough lanes open in the grocery store and we have to wait, we have to repeat ourselves, someone doesn't do something we asked for—the first time, we get an illness or disease and we believe the lie that we don't deserve it and we're frustrated that no one can find a cure...and so on.

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth...Then God said, 'Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness...And God saw everything that He made, and behold, it was very good.

"Truly no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice, that he should live on forever and never see the pit.

"Who has first given to Me, that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is Mine."
~Genesis 1:1, 26a, 31a; Psalm 49:7-9; Job 41:11 (ESV)

Because I'm a prideful, ungrateful woman who often feels so entitled to every good, but no evil to befall me, I must remind myself daily of what I truly am entitled to; what my deeds have truly earned me: to be in the freezing cold or suffering scorching heat—hungry, naked, verbally assaulted, beaten, rejected by all, spit on and more, all the days of my life until my very last breath. Then afterwards, I deserve to burn in Hell for all eternity.

But because God chose me for His own, before the foundations of the world, He crushed His own Son. He allowed Christ to be beaten, spit on, exposed before all, shamed and rejected, suffered in ways I could neither imagine nor endure—to die my death and give me His life.

When I'm done with this mental exercise, I find my heart is more easily grateful and joyful that I can breathe a single breath without pain, and that any human being is not cruel to me. I find that I'm especially grateful that the sun is shining on my face and the Son is shining in and through my heart.

Then I am satisfied, satisfied and eternally grateful, and in awe of the fact that God Almighty calls me into holy, righteous, peaceful and intimate communion with Him by purifying me with the precious and pure blood of His one and only begotten Son, Jesus Christ my Lord.

On April 8, 2013, this is the note I wrote for myself regarding Job 41:11—

Any good we receive comes from God, even our "good" acts (James 1:17). For He is the one who prepared them for us that we might walk in them.

"For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." ~Eph 2:10






Let us, as God's dearly beloved children, always find our worth, our joy and our peace, not in the people around us or in our circumstances (whether good or evil), but in Christ alone—mindful and grateful that in God's grace, He gives us the good we are not owed—and in His mercy, He withholds the evil we are owed.