What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory?

Romans‬ ‭9‬:‭22‬-‭23

God owes me. Isn’t this how I really feel much of the time? That I’m owed some kind of a spiritual allowance. That I’m pretty much good enough and deserving enough to be picked for the team.

God owes me. Take it a step further. God owes me salvation, freedom, happiness, relief. Pick. Does it fit with our sub-conscience beliefs?

I think that at the bottom of my life and addiction and wants and needs, there’s an underlying current of goodness that exists. I’m not always tapped into it but it’s always there.

And I can reach down and drink from it. I should do it more often, but hey, I’m busy.

God made me. God is good. God is love. I am human. I am not perfect. I am forgiven. I have fallen short, gone astray, given in to the desires of the flesh, etc.

But I’ve been bought with a price, right? So I’ll keep hydrated by the ever present creek of His goodness. As needed.

Because it’s basically mine by rights.

God owes me.

But, this is BS. Maybe well intentioned, but it’s just a twisted version of events that ignores very straightforward truth.

God does not owe me salvation. He has offered it to me, nonetheless. At great cost. More importantly for my perspective, though, I am a passenger.

God really is God.

If I can’t wrap my head around Him making space for evil in the world and for the ability of us to willingly die of thirst for Him, it’s not an indictment of Him but of the fact that I am not Him nor capable of fully knowing the why or the how of this.

I sure do want to be a vessel of mercy. I want to keep constantly tapped into the wellspring. I want to stop treating spiritual matters with flippancy. I want to believe.

God, open my eyes, help my unbelief and guide my faltering steps.