Will A Toddler Go For Nothing?

Thing Four is in the full heat of potty training, and she has learned to game the system. Whenever she goes potty, she gets a chocolate chip as a reward. What we have since learned is that my daughter is a liar, and will tell us she's used the potty when she hasn't, strictly to collect the chocolate. So we've had to train in some bad bathroom etiquette , don't flush, so we can check the evidence and confirm whether we are, in fact, being scammed by a two year old.(And trust me a lesson on lying was given in a biblical way.)

And look, I wasn't trying to make a biblical analogy while checking a toilet for evidence, but I had one anyway.

Will man serve God for nothing?

I've sat with that question before, and it goes all the way back to Job, where Satan stands in front of God and says it plainly:

"Does Job fear God for nothing? Have You not made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But now, stretch out Your hand and touch all that he has, and he will surely curse You to Your face!" (Job 1:9-11, NKJV).

Take away the health, the money, the family, the chocolate chip, and watch how fast the obedience dries up. And if I'm honest, man is not above my daughter's motive. Not lying outright, but doing a version of it ,going through just enough motions to collect the chocolate chip without actually sitting through the hard part.

Take away the treat, or make us actually sit there and prove it, and see how fast our enthusiasm changes.

It's funny watching it happen in miniature. My daughter isn't a bad kid. She's two. Wanting a treat for doing a hard, new, uncomfortable thing is reasonable.

I get it, and I'm rooting for her the whole time.

And eventually, as she gets older, something will click and she'll start going without the fanfare. But for now she still likes the treat. Honestly, I don't blame her. Somewhere down the road she'll grow into just being a kid who uses the potty because that's who she'll be.

Luke's passage in 17:10 bears this out, when we hear Jesus say that after we have done all commanded of us, we say we are unworthy and unprofitable servants, only doing our duty.

The Bible calls us to that mentality. It was the same with our earthly fathers we had to do their will, like it or not, whether we got anything out of it or not, understood it or not. It often came down to that saying my kids hate to hear: "You do what I tell you, because I said so." I've said it myself more times than I can count. That is where we need to end up in our relationship with God.

He gives us reasons galore, but should all of that disappear, we had better do His will, because He is God, and He is the creator of all that is.

I'd like to say that as I approach 30 years on this earth, I've fully arrived at that place spiritually. I haven't. I still have days where I lean on needing the comfort of that reward. Job wanted his health and his family back too, and God wasn't stingy about eventually giving quite a bit of it to him. But there's a difference between wanting the reward and needing it to show up before you'll bother.

Job says it plainest in the middle of losing everything

(Job 13:15, NKJV): "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him."

That's the ceiling. That's the whole test passed in one sentence. I'll do this even if it never pays off.

But we do serve a God who loves us and looks after us. Hebrews 11:6 says we must believe that God is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

Anyway, if you need me, I'll be in the bathroom, cheering on my daughter and deeply convicted by her, which is not a sentence I expected to write today.

Love you dearly. Jacob.