GOD MAY HAVE
ALREADY WON!
"Grant MacDonald, of L'Etete, New Brunswick, Canada you may have already won $10 million dollars! Yes, that's right, Grant! How would you like to fly out of the L'Etete Airport and wing your way to your winnings?"
Have you ever got one of those "personalized" sweepstakes letters that look so official, so important, so urgent, but aren't? I have, and I must say they lose me right about the time they start talking about the L'Etete Airport because, hey, guess what?-- L'Etete doesn't have an airport!
What bothers me most about mail of this ilk is that on occasion, in a millisecond of weakness, I wonder. I wonder if I should do the sticker licking, number writing dance of the sweepstakes contestant. Ah, but this stuff is silly. It's a waste of time right? Well, maybe if you were God, the odds would be slightly better and it would be worth a try?
What am I talking about? Have a look at the following quote from an Associated Press article written by Tom Bayles-- "A sweepstakes notice arrived at the Bushnell Assembly of God this month announcing that God, of Bushnell, Florida, was a finalist for the $11 million top prize. "I always thought He lived here, but I didn't actually know," said Bill Brack, pastor of the church which is about 60 miles north of Tampa. "Now I do. He's got a P.O. box here." "God, we've been searching for you," American Family wrote in the letter, as first reported by the local weekly newspaper, the Sumter County Times. The message was centered between two round seals, requesting God to "come forward."
Interesting story isn't it? I imagine someone at American Family Publishers is deleting a few jots from their mailing database as you read this! But, what I really find interesting about this article isn't the obvious mistake of American Family Publishers in sending the sweepstakes to Bushnell Assembly of God, rather it is a couple of interesting statements that happened as a result of this mistake. The first one is, "God, we've been searching for you,"
It's nice to know that someone is still looking for God! Some days you have to wonder. But the down side is their reason for the search. The search for God, in this case, was motivated by the hopes of getting something from Him. In other words, American Publishers search for God wasn't motivated by truth, or faith, or the deep questions of life. They wanted Him to buy something from then. They wanted funds, not faith, profit, not purity, sales not salvation (no offense).
Seems like there's a lot of that going around these days! What about you? Are you more interested in WHAT God can give you than you are in knowing WHO God is? Do you WANT instead of WORSHIP and WISH instead of WONDER? I guess the best way to answer that question is: would you still love and serve God even if everything you had was taken away from you tomorrow? Would you be like Job and hang in there or like his lovely wife and think that cursing God and dying would be in order?
The next statement that caught my attention was, The message was centered between two round seals requesting God to "come forward." How could anyone ask God to come forward, as if somehow He's been in hiding? Jesus was and is, "God come forward" As John tells us in the first chapter of his gospel, "The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).
The phrase translated as "made His dwelling among us" literally means, that he pitched His tent among us. Jesus came into this world to show us God.
Later on, He told Philip: "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, "Show us the Father?" (John 14:9).
In a few weeks, we will be celebrating the significance of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus was lifted up, for the world to see the love in action of God coming forward. God, "come forward?" Sorry, He's been here, done that! Now if the letter had said, "God, come back," then they would have been on to something!
