The
other day someone was asking about my writing in this BLOG. I read a devotion and the Word and then ask
the Lord, what am I supposed to say today.
And “out it comes”. Very often,
there will be some event – interaction from the previous day that the Lord uses
as a launching point from what I have read.
So in that regard what I write is not premeditated as such, but more
spontaneous … although that is not to say that there are not years of life that
undergird what I write. I’ve done this 1838
times so far, plus this one …. Frankly I am amazed by the process and perhaps
more amazed that God is using me in this way.
So
to the point. As Christians, we live our lives on this earth with a tension
between the spiritual and the natural.
The preaching of the earthly health and wealth gospel … God wants you to
be rich and healthy … is the carnal Christian's attempt to resolve that
tension. The idea is that God will give
you money .. which He tells you not to love … and health .. which He tells you that
you will face affliction and hardship of many kinds … with the unstated
objective of being independent of God .. all of your earthly needs will be met.
Do you see that this is a deviant version of the Gospel? That this is heresy?
God
wants us to give up our dependence upon earthly comforts and assurances and
trust Him, alone. When Job lost everything,
the assumption was that he had done something wrong .. why? Because he lost his earthly possessions. That
is the thinking of the natural mind. The
Truth was there was something spiritual at work that superseded the
natural. The same is true in our
lives. The thing is, you must be willing
to not submit to natural thinking, yielding your devotion and dependence upon
the natural but, instead, trust God's provision.
What
do you hunger for? I see people
struggling after disasters and war and poverty, while Americans are trying to
figure out if they should go ahead and buy that $1000 iPhone and get rid of
their $700 iPhone. The Church in the
United States is the “frog in the pot” with respect to materialism. We don’t know that we are being cooked …
instead, we think the water temperature is just right.
I
was watching the holiday spending phenomenon
.. which starts at Thanksgiving and is still going on long after
Christmas has passed. I am trying to
find money to help people recover from Hurricane Harvey and those that have
money are spending it – hand over fist – to satisfy their lust for more. I think it is safe to say that much of what
we buy is to satisfy our wants. Our
needs were met a long time ago. And if
you don’t have the cash right now, put it on credit so you can satisfy that
want.
(James
4:2-4) “You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You
fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not
receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.
Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is
enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes
himself an enemy of God.”
Ugh!
That does not leave a lot of wiggle room for buying the next thing on Amazon does
it. I guess I should quote Jesus to bring this to a close. (Matthew 13:14-16) “And in them the prophecy
of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: ‘Hearing you will hear and shall not
understand, And seeing you will see and not perceive; For the hearts of this
people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they
have closed, Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears,
Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should heal
them.’ But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they
hear"
How
do we overcome this struggle that we face every day? It is a spiritual problem
that needs a spiritual solution. Let God change your heart’s desires.
(Psalm
37:4) "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of
your heart"
Pray
about it!
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