If we think we deserve God’s blessings, we will be disappointed when He does not provide them, thereby causing us to question His sovereignty and goodness.  However, when we realize that we sin incessantly and immediately deserve God’s eternal condemnation, we will understand that every breath is an undeserved gift of God.  

Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
-Matthew 6:31-33, ESV
In Christian circles, we often talk extensively about trials and how to walk through them by faith.  This is the right emphasis, as our lives are filled with various trials.  There are numerous books, seminars, and other media to prepare people for suffering in various ways and teach them how to endure any number of trials.  But that emphasis can come at the expense of adequately preparing us for blessings.  At first we may think such preparation would be unnecessary.  After all, who really needs to know how to prepare for good times?  But blessings bring temptations that trials do not, so we are wise to prepare for them just as we prepare for trials.  In good times, we are tempted to rely on ourselves and neglect God (Proverbs 30:8-9), give into thinking that we deserve these blessings and therefore receive them without thankfulness (1 Corinthians 4:7), and let our guard down and thus leave ourselves susceptible to temptation to sin (2 Samuel 11).  I talk more about that last one my leadership paper when describing how successful people are more prone to compromise ethically in good times than hard times.  That alone should be enough to cause us to approach good times with caution.  Indeed blessings are often a test just like trials—and I would venture to say that more people fail tests of blessing than trials (Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25).  When facing times of blessing, I want to focus on two opposite but serious temptations we face: claiming for ourselves what God has not given us and stiff-arming them out of fear of disappointment.
Don’t “Name it and Claim it”
On the one hand, it is tempting to think we deserve blessings from God, claiming any pleasant promise in Scripture for ourselves.  We read these passages and assume that God is promising to provide us with wealth, family, health, and a myriad of other blessings just because a verse refers to them.  In reality, many of these verses are not specific promises to everyone.  In some cases, they are not promises at all but general principles.  This is true of most of Proverbs and many blessings in the psalms.  Here are a few examples:
“He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers”
-Psalm 1:3, ESV
“Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart”
-Psalm 37:4, ESV
“For the simple are killed by their turning away, and the complacency of fools destroys them; but whoever listens to me [wisdom] will dwell secure and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.”
-Proverbs 1:32-33, ESV
“Long life is in her [wisdom’s] right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor.  Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed.”
-Proverbs 3:16-18, ESV
Other examples include Psalm 91:10 and Proverbs 12:21. All of these link righteousness and wisdom with blessings like wealth and long life, but we can all think of numerous examples where upright people suffer from poverty, disease, and early death.  These verses are general statements and thus are not promises for every person.  Additionally, there are promises that are for specific people, even if their subject is not immediately evident.  For example, Hillsong’s “You Said” includes a line about asking God to give us the nations, but that is from Psalm 2:8, which is a promise to Jesus not us.  Therefore, we cannot claim that promise since we are not Jesus.  God is not some cosmic vending machine where we insert our coins of faith or good works and thus compel Him to bless us.  This means that we must not view God’s blessings as somehow owed to us.  If we think we deserve God’s blessings, we will be disappointed when He does not provide them, thereby causing us to question His sovereignty and goodness.  However, when we realize that we sin incessantly and immediately deserve God’s eternal condemnation, we will understand that every breath is an undeserved gift of God.  Then, when God takes away blessings or withholds them from us, we will not question Him but say with Job: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21).
While we often avoid the temptation to openly claim God’s blessings as if we deserve them, the greater temptation lies in secret.  When we lack a certain blessing or when that blessing seems imminent, we can be given to fantasizing about that blessing.  In that sense, we are mentally claiming that blessing for ourselves and therefore displaying a lack of contentment with our current situation.  It is certainly true that God can give us earnest desires for these blessings.  It is also true that some level of imagination is often required in the godly process of discernment.  But if we allow those desires to take center stage and fail to rein in our imaginations, we can easily cross into the sin of covetousness.  Years ago when a friend was struggling with such thoughts about whether to pursue a romantic relationship, he came to a realization through study of Scripture that there are only two biblical was to think of women in the church: wife or sister.  There is no third category of “future wife”. She was not his wife, so the only biblical way he could view her was as his sister in Christ.  Later, he met and eventually married a different woman.  Looking back now, he can be thankful that God withheld the blessing of the relationship in that moment and helped him be content in his situation until God eventually did give him that blessing.
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Both the Synod of Dort and the Westminster Assembly serve as noteworthy authoritative and confessional witnesses in church history to the inspiration of the Comma as the Trinity’s divinely self-attesting testimony. Our fathers in the faith were aware of the text-critical issues surrounding the Comma since the third century; they examined the extant evidence and found that “almost all Greek copies” available in their day contained it; they weighed other considerations inherent to their methodology; and they owned the reading as true and trustworthy. 

For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. – 1 John 5:7
The above verse is found in nearly all Reformation-era Bibles, such as Wycliffe 1395, Tyndale 1525, Coverdale 1535, Great Bible 1539, Matthew’s 1549, Geneva 1560, Bishops’ 1568, Sagradas Escrituras 1569, Biblia Reina Valera Antigua 1602, Giovanni Diodati 1607, and the Authorized (or King James) Version 1611. The verse is also cited as a proof text in many historic expressions of the Reformed faith: The Belgic Confession 1561 (Article 9), Heidelberg Catechism 1563 (Lord’s Day 8), Westminster Confession of Faith 1646 (Chapter 2), Westminster Larger Catechism 1648 (Q&A 9), and London Baptist Confession of Faith 1689 (Chapter 2).
Today, however, most Reformed scholars and pastors question or reject the verse as uninspired and unworthy of inclusion as a confessional or catechetical proof text for the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. This significant shift has led to confusion for contemporary Christians.
Debates over the inspiration of 1 John 5:7, otherwise known as the so-called Comma Johanneum, can be traced all the way back to the third century A.D.  Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that Reformation-era scholars included the Comma in their doctrinal statements intentionally and with sound and studied reasons. Let us consider two historical and confessional witnesses to its veracity.
Witness # 1 – The Synod of Dort was the international church council that published the aforementioned Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism. It also commissioned a new translation of the Dutch Bible which came to be called the Statenvertaling (States Translation). This new Bible contained many marginal notes and some of them acknowledged known textual variants. The entry for 1 John 5:7 reads as follows:
This verse, seeing it contains a very clear testimony of the Holy Trinity, seems to have been left out of some copies by the Arians, but is found in almost all Greek copies, and even by many ancient and worthy teachers also, who lived before the times of the Arians, brought out of them for proof of the Holy Trinity; and the opposition of the witnesses upon earth.
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Through the indwelling sin that remains, Christ is glorified. While the enemy, sin, dwells in us, Christ’s grace and Holy Spirit are at work in us so that the enemy cannot overcome, domineer, or destroy us. Because of indwelling sin, we know that we cannot justify ourselves, but can only be justified by the perfect obedience of Christ, which we lay hold of by faith. In this, Christ is glorified.

Why do Christians still struggle with sin? Why does God allow it to remain and not kill it immediately like he will do when we see him face to face and reach our glorified state? Every believer has asked these questions when the war against flesh and Spirit becomes tiring, but they are not without answers. Below, Thomas Boston gives seven reasons sin is not immediately eliminated from the believer’s life.
1. God has ordered the matter of the believer’s sanctification that sin is left to be active in their souls while here on earth, for their further humiliation. For example, God gave Paul a thorn in the flesh to keep him humble. And so we find David, after his grievous fall, grows in the grace of humility.
2. The Lord allows sin to remain in His people so they are stirred to the frequent exercise of prayer. The soul feels the continual need of pardon, and therefore must be much lying at God’s footstool. When His children grow remiss in their duty, the Lord sometimes allows them to fall into some grievous sin to awaken them and wound their conscience, so that they cry to Him like a child who falls into a fire.
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