“The basic premise of religion– that if you live a good life, things will go well for you– is wrong. Jesus was the most morally upright person who ever lived, yet He had a life filled with the experience of poverty, rejection, injustice, and even torture.”
GENESIS 27-28
JOURNAL
As I sit with the story of Jacob, I keep asking why God would choose to bless a man who lies, manipulates, and schemes his way forward. And yet, when I look at the healings in Matthew, the same pattern emerges. Jesus does not respond to moral resumes or earned righteousness. We are not given background stories of virtue. What we are shown is need and faith. People come to Him broken, desperate, and believing He alone can do what no one else can. That seems to be the common thread.
This turns the idea of blessing completely upside down. Blessing is not a reward for being good. It is a gift given in response to trust. Need and faith are the only real constants on our side of the equation, because everything else is unstable. God alone is consistent. He is the only truly trustworthy thing in my life and in this universe. Everything else is temporary, flawed, and destined to fail.
When I look honestly at my own life, I see how often I have tried to make something other than God my god. I have placed my hope in people. I have expected my wife, my family, my friends, and others to be what only God can be. I wanted them to be my safety, my validation, my source of stability when life fell apart. What I found, over and over, is that people cannot bear that weight. They were never meant to. Expecting them to fill that role only leads to frustration, disappointment, and heartache.
This is not just my story. It is the story of Scripture. Humanity’s constant temptation is to replace God with people, possessions, achievements, experiences, or outcomes. That replacement is the essence of sin. It distorts love, poisons relationships, and eventually leads to emptiness and despair. When something other than God becomes the center, everything else falls out of alignment.
God is meant to be our fixed point. He is the lighthouse, the North Star, the reference by which we set the direction of our lives. When God holds that place, everything else finds its proper position. Only then are we free to truly love people, not as saviors or solutions, but as fellow travelers. Only then can we serve without demanding that others meet needs they were never designed to meet.
Jesus shows us what this looks like lived out. His life was completely oriented toward the Father. Even in suffering, abandonment, and injustice, He did not replace God with comfort, power, or escape. He trusted God fully, even when that trust led Him through pain rather than around it. His life did not end in earthly success or recognition, but it opened the way for redemption, restoration, and eternal life.
This is the heart of the Christian faith. We are invited into the same kind of relationship Jesus had with the Father. We are offered identity as sons and daughters of God. But that invitation requires surrender. It requires letting go of anything that tries to occupy God’s place. When God alone is our source of direction, wisdom, love, power, and discipline, we finally stand in the right posture. From that place, love becomes pure, service becomes joyful, and faith becomes steady. That is the point of it all.
As I sit with the story of Jacob, I keep asking why God would choose to bless a man who lies, manipulates, and schemes his way forward. And yet, when I look at the healings in Matthew, the same pattern emerges. Jesus does not respond to moral resumes or earned righteousness. We are not given background stories of virtue. What we are shown is need and faith. People come to Him broken, desperate, and believing He alone can do what no one else can. That seems to be the common thread.
This turns the idea of blessing completely upside down. Blessing is not a reward for being good. It is a gift given in response to trust. Need and faith are the only real constants on our side of the equation, because everything else is unstable. God alone is consistent. He is the only truly trustworthy thing in my life and in this universe. Everything else is temporary, flawed, and destined to fail.
When I look honestly at my own life, I see how often I have tried to make something other than God my god. I have placed my hope in people. I have expected my wife, my family, my friends, and others to be what only God can be. I wanted them to be my safety, my validation, my source of stability when life fell apart. What I found, over and over, is that people cannot bear that weight. They were never meant to. Expecting them to fill that role only leads to frustration, disappointment, and heartache.
This is not just my story. It is the story of Scripture. Humanity’s constant temptation is to replace God with people, possessions, achievements, experiences, or outcomes. That replacement is the essence of sin. It distorts love, poisons relationships, and eventually leads to emptiness and despair. When something other than God becomes the center, everything else falls out of alignment.
God is meant to be our fixed point. He is the lighthouse, the North Star, the reference by which we set the direction of our lives. When God holds that place, everything else finds its proper position. Only then are we free to truly love people, not as saviors or solutions, but as fellow travelers. Only then can we serve without demanding that others meet needs they were never designed to meet.
Jesus shows us what this looks like lived out. His life was completely oriented toward the Father. Even in suffering, abandonment, and injustice, He did not replace God with comfort, power, or escape. He trusted God fully, even when that trust led Him through pain rather than around it. His life did not end in earthly success or recognition, but it opened the way for redemption, restoration, and eternal life.
This is the heart of the Christian faith. We are invited into the same kind of relationship Jesus had with the Father. We are offered identity as sons and daughters of God. But that invitation requires surrender. It requires letting go of anything that tries to occupy God’s place. When God alone is our source of direction, wisdom, love, power, and discipline, we finally stand in the right posture. From that place, love becomes pure, service becomes joyful, and faith becomes steady. That is the point of it all.
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