Question:  Dear Greg,

        I want to know how hard I have to pray and how long I will be punished for my past before I will have good luck in my life again.  Does God make us pay for our sins before he forgives us or was I just born under a bad star?  I have had so much bad luck recently that I don’t know if I can take any more.

        Tasha

Answer:  Dear Tasha,

        You don’t have to pray very hard at all for God to listen to you.  About 5-10 seconds, a whisper or a thought will do.  That’s it.

        Now, about the idea that God is handing out good luck charms, or prizes for good behavior: religion (as opposed to biblically based Christ-centered Christianity that the New Testament teaches) has given you— and billions of others, I might add— that idea.  Good luck is not what God is into.

        God is into loving you and saving you.  He is not mad at you.  He loves you right now just as much as he ever has or ever will, because unlike any human being you or I know, or ever will know, he is not about “conditional” love.  He truly loves us “unconditionally”.  He loves us because he is good, not because (or when) we are good.  That’s great news!  Better than good luck.

        Jesus Christ never told us that we would become better off in this physical life because we do what he says.  He never told us that he would bring us great health and fabulous wealth when we did all of the right things and the opposite when we behave badly.  God loves us, but he is not primarily interested in this physical life— he is interested in eternity.  That’s what he offers, by his grace--not because of what we do, or how many good things we can pile up to impress him— but he offers us eternal life simply because he loves us.

        Paul was one of the great men of God in the New Testament.  He had some kind of huge physical problem (we’re not told exactly what it was).  He implored God to take it away, to heal him, to make his life better, easier and more comfortable.  God didn’t.

        Paul concluded that God was telling him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”  Paul then says, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.  For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

        God can use the “bad luck” you are experiencing to make you spiritually strong.  Turn to him in prayer and listen to him— not superstition or fairy tales.  Believe it or not, God wants to make you spiritually strong.  That is far more important to him than your physical circumstances.

        In Christ,

        Greg Albrecht