Do You Know George MacDonald?

It was my turn to lead staff devotions and I wanted to do something creative. Each week a different staff member leads our time to start our meetings, often confessing their offering to be “half baked”. That phrase just means that the time will be best experienced when we all participate in the leading, listening and processing of the main ideas and scripture. Our “half baked” devotions are actually better than if they were fully prepared and polished.

“Men who would rather receive salvation from God than God their salvation”

-George MacDonald

My half baked devotional was going to be utilizing a book about George MacDonald, short writings collected by C.S. Lewis. This book had 365 passages, so I assigned one to each staff member, according to their birthday. Each person took a turn to read the passage assigned to their birth date. The passages were read, reacted to and considered by all. It was time well spent. Everyone helped in the baking.

One of the readings drew out a concept that has been resonating with me the past few months and an author like MacDonald can capture it in just a few powerful words. It was titled “false want”…

“Men who would rather receive salvation from God than God their salvation”

I realize there are a few ways to take this, but the core concept is that we want a gift from God—life, but we don’t want to spend it with Him. Sadly sometimes this goes along with our understanding and teaching about salvation. Just recite a certain prayer and you get the gift of eternal life.

One of the many problems with that contract way of thinking is that it may miss that eternal life is a life WITH God…ongoing. And it begins at a sincere prayer of repentance and received forgiveness through Christ.

The point of salvation is to reconnect us into an ongoing relationship with God Himself.

I’ll confess, sometimes I want God’s gifts and provision much more than I want Him. We’ve all been in relationships where people take from us without regard to how it makes us feel. We often wonder if they are with you because of what they can get from you instead of the joy of just being with you. That feels lousy…feels wrong.

We were all sobered by that pithy statement MacDonald wrote generations ago.

Life with God is not to be divorced from life from God.

He knows what is best for us, and that is a call to abiding in Him, not hiding from Him.