Why I ripped up a winning lottery ticket.

Have you ever felt like you need to do something or stop doing something, but it was hard? That's me.

This week I had to give something up, and it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Listen, you may think this will sound silly — and on some levels maybe it is — but as I really thought about it and even studied it, it revealed something dark within me.

Here's what I had to give up: buying lottery tickets.

As I write this, the Mega Millions multi-state lottery jackpot is over half a billion dollars. Half a billion! Now, I'm not a rabid lottery player, but in general when one of the big jackpots gets over $300 million, I tend to buy some numbers until someone hits. I'll throw about $10 at it during every draw.

So as the Mega Millions began to climb this past week, I started buying tickets. But every time I bought some, I had this inner voice telling me not to. I ignored it. In fact, I started coming up with all the reasons I actually SHOULD buy the lottery tickets.

• "I have a lot of good causes and non-profits I want to give money to."
• "My wife is dealing with some really hard health challenges and we need it for medical expenses."
• "I'd be a better steward of the money than a lot of other people."
• "I'll use it to build a mental health retreat center!"

But no matter what reason I came up with, I still had a conviction that I shouldn't. And do you want to know what that meant? It meant that with each purchase, I was actually sinning. (I know, we don't like to use that word. But there, I used it.)

Pause.

Let me be clear: I don't think buying lottery tickets is wrong. It's not a sin for everyone at all times everywhere. HOWEVER, if you are feeling convicted about it, if there's that little voice telling you not to and you do it anyway, that's where it becomes an issue.

The little voice (which us Christians call the Holy Spirit) was telling me not to. But I did it anyway. There's this verse in the Bible (James 4:17) that says, "So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin." That "for him" part is key.

Friend, I was being told what the right thing to do was, and I still wasn't doing it. That's when it became wrong for me, that's when it became a sin. See, what became clear to me was that I was putting my hope, my trust, my faith in winning that jackpot. I was viewing it as the solution to a lot of recent challenges and problems. I would catch myself daydreaming about what I would do with the money, and how winning would make things so much easier and better.

But you know what that meant? It meant there was a part of me that wasn't relying on God to do all that. Instead of giving him my whole trust, I had set up the lottery winnings as my safe place of refuge. My conviction, then, was that I was replacing God with the lottery. I was placing my hope in it instead of turning to him and depending on his ways and his plan and his goodness — whatever that looks like in this season.

I knew what I had to do, then. There was just one little issue: my latest lottery ticket purchase was a winner.

When I plugged the ticket's numbers into the app, it said I had won $4. OK, I know that's not the jackpot. But just winning that $4 immediately sent me into bargaining mode with God.

"It's not wrong if I don't spend any more money, right? I'll just exchange the winning ticket for two more sets of numbers and then I'll stop."

Nope.

The conviction was still strong. I knew what God was asking of me. So I did it. I took the winning ticket and start tearing it up. Piece by little bitty piece. Until it was nothing but shreds.

And can I tell you something? I felt so good afterwords. I mean, I was so at peace. It was like a burden was lifted off of me. It was like with each tear I was surrendering more and more to God — trusting him to author my future in whatever way he saw fit — and my soul actually rejoiced.

So here's what I want to ask you: What's the "lottery ticket" in your life? What's that thing you're relying on to give you peace, hope, rest, or security that isn't God? And what is he saying about giving it up? In the end, anything we place above him for those comforts are cheap imitations. Even if it's half a billion dollars.

And your soul is just waiting for you to do what he says. It's waiting to rejoice and be unburdened. Trust me, I know.

(Pic: I fished the shredded winning lottery ticket out of my office trash can. I don't know, maybe I should frame it. Because it took a lot more for me to do that than I thought.)