The thing about having a feeling that you need to carry out some “religious duty” is that it’s a lie based on history and just enough truth to make it feel real.
But the lie ensures that we will always carry a fear that we are not good enough.
My daughter has very little of the things needed to make a life in this world. Money? Few coins in a piggy bank… Job skills? Getting there but attention span is short. But when we spend a day together, she will often come and sit on my lap and say “thank you for the best day ever!” Or when she heard a friend of ours had to go to hospital, she brought me her piggy bank and asked me to give the money to them because she “knows” that hospitals are expensive (actually she just knows that a R5 packet of chips cost R20 at the hospital coffeeshop)
But the point is that her gratitude and her service comes from her heart, not because she wants to secure board and lodging in the house. She wasn’t taught to feel gratitude and she wasn’t taught to care… it’s an urging from the Holy Spirit.
In Romans 8:14 Paul says: ”The mature children on God are those who are moved by the impulses of the Holy Spirit”
Some things in life we have to do. It’s preset in the natural laws of the world, like harvesting. The corn is on the field and ready, we don’t need to wait for the Holy Spirit to urge us to go and harvest. The time is now, go do it.
But then some things are simply set in spiritual law: we are heirs, we are children and we do not (and cannot ) work for God’s approval or acceptance… it’s just there.
“…and since we are His true children, we qualify to share all his treasures, for indeed, we are heirs of God himself.”
(Romans 8:17 TPT)
We act because we are grateful, we give time, money, gifts or even ourselves because we feel that deep inside of us. Gratitude that is bubbling over, because there is a realisation of the immense gifts we have received.
We do not give out of our abundance (although we now have unlimited supplies of anything we need) or let our actions be guided by a religious requirement. We give out of gratitude. We praise because it wells up inside of us, and we act because we can stand in strength and ability and authority given by God.
