I’ve been listening to some modern worship lately. Often, I am moved by the heartfelt connection to God expressed in many of the songs I hear, but recently I found myself disturbed. What I heard may have sounded good and hopeful to many listeners, but as the singer proclaimed that God was surely bringing “more and better” earthly blessings—promising worshippers that elevation, promotion, and breakthrough were on the way—I could not help but feel sorry for those singing along.
If we listen to modern worship with a biblically discerning ear, we soon find a recurring theme that can lead to harmful thoughts about our relationship with God. A popular idea in these theological ideologies is that the Christian life is always moving toward some future earthly moment of deeper fulfillment. It is the belief that the “real” blessing of God is always just ahead of us—that the next season will finally deliver what our hearts long for. While this sounds hopeful, it is deeply misleading. It trains believers to look past Christ in search of something more, teaching them to view earthly rewards as the primary evidence of God’s love. Subtly, it suggests that promotion and elevation are to be expected, or even deserved.
The message of the true Gospel is not the same. This consumeristic, self-first mentality has far-reaching implications for the Church. It teaches us to expect to be served rather than to serve (Mk 10:35-45). It teaches us to expect to be befriended rather than to truly be a friend to others (John 15:13). It teaches us that God is “for us”—which is true in Christ—but it neglects to disciple the believer to be for God.
While these reasons are sufficient to warrant caution, the primary reason to avoid such songs is that they devalue and marginalize the beauty of Christ Himself. Jesus is not a Santa Claus figure whose purpose is to deliver the “good things” we desire. When we see rightly, He is the one we value above all else. He is not the doorway to a better treasure; He is the treasure. He did not come merely to bring us along the way; He is the Way. He did not come merely to show us the truth for our benefit; He is the Truth. He did not come merely to give abundant life; He is that Life.
This is the heartbeat of the psalmists when they say that the Lord is their portion. When Asaph declares in Psalm 73:26 “God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever,” he is not imagining God as the One who will eventually give him the life he wants. He is confessing that God Himself is the life he wants. The Hebrew idea of portion is the allotted inheritance, the treasure that defines one’s identity and security. Asaph looks at the prosperity of the wicked, at the ease and success he once envied, and he realizes that none of it compares to the reality of belonging to God. His heart shifts from wanting what others have to wanting God alone. The portion is not what God gives. The portion is God.
Jeremiah makes the same confession in the ruins of Jerusalem when he says, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will hope in Him.” There is no breakthrough on the horizon for Jeremiah. There is no elevation, no promotion, no earthly blessing on the way. There is only devastation. Yet he says that God is enough. Hope is not anchored in what God might do tomorrow but in who God is today. David echoes this in Psalm 16 when he says, “The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup.” David is not delighting in circumstances. He is delighting in God.
This same truth exposes the misunderstanding behind another verse that is often misused: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Many Christians treat this as a promise that God will eventually hand them the things they long for. When those desires remain unfulfilled, they feel cheated, as though God has withheld something He promised. But the psalmist is not offering a formula for earthly fulfillment. He is describing what happens when the heart truly delights in God. When we delight in the Lord, He becomes the desire of our heart. The promise is not that God will give us everything we want. The promise is that God will reshape what we want until He Himself is the deepest desire of our heart.
Now we know that no two believers are exactly alike and so we must be cautious to apply a formula to these matters, but could it be that, for many, the unfulfilled longings they carry are not evidence that God has failed them, but rather those longings themselves are evidences that they have not yet delighted in God as the psalmist exhorts? They want their desires satisfied, but they have not yet arrived at the place where God is their delight. When He becomes the delight, the heart finds its rest, not because it has received everything it once wanted, but because it has found the One who is better than everything it once wanted.
This is why the theology of constant breakthrough is so spiritually empty. As long as we seek earthly elevation, we will never be elevated in God’s sight. As long as we chase earthly blessing, we will never know how truly blessed we are in Christ. Christ is not the means to our breakthrough. Christ is the breakthrough. He is the portion. He is the inheritance. He is fulfillment of every longing the human heart carries. Thus, is it not our earthly desires being fulfilled that will truly satisfy. Rather, when He becomes the delight of our life, we discover that nothing more is needed and He himself becomes what we desire more than all things. He himself is the portion that cannot be improved upon.
When we echo the Psalmist’s heart, and know our God as our glorious portion, something else becomes gloriously true: we cannot be defeated. The world may take our comfort, but it cannot take our joy. It may take our freedom, but it cannot take our hope. It may take our life, but it cannot take our Christ. This is why Stephen could pray for grace for his murderers while being stoned to death, why Paul and Silas could sing when chained to prison walls, why the apostles could count suffering as gain, and why Paul could say that to live is Christ and to die is gain. When God Himself is our portion, then nothing in this world has the power to alter or steal the joy that flows from Him. Circumstances may rise and fall, but the portion remains. The heart may break, but the inheritance does not. The body may fail, but the treasure is untouched. The world may rage, but the joy of the Lord stands unshaken.
This is the life Scripture calls us to. Not a life spent chasing the next blessing, but a life rooted in the One who is the blessing. Not a life waiting expectantly for breakthrough, but a life grounded in the One who has already broken through sin, death, defeat, and the grave. Not a life defined by what we hope God might give, but a life defined by the God who has already given Himself. When He becomes our portion, our delight, and our desire, we discover that nothing more is needed.
Love, Blessing and Victory in Jesus,
Pastor Brian
But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:7-14