Myths

I would like to echo something Matt Chandler said in one of his recent podcast...

It seems we think that when we have everything cleaned up, and when we look pretty is when God is most honored. When we have the biggest house and the newest car and we say to our friends, "Look how good God is..." And your friend could say a few things...

1) God did that for you? I'll take that God.

2) Insanity, You credit God for all that, and I worked my butt off to get everything I have.

------

Except we don't glorify God most in times of prosperity and abundance but in times of suffering and scarcity...

We can tell a watching world that God is our treasure when we have nothing. Because there are some preachers on TV lately who say "if we're children of the King, we should live like Kings!"

The prosperity, name it and claim your blessing teaching must be a relatively brand new idea because it never existed in the times of Jesus or the early church.

My favorite example from Scripture is the prophet Jeremiah.

God tells him that if he says what God tells him to say, does what hes supposed to do then Jeremiah would have the power to build and tear down kingdoms. (Jer 1:10) And every time Jeremiah opens his mouth he gets beat up and mocked. Twice he gets upset with God (one of those times being naked and in a pit) but the one I want to highlight is in chapter 15:

Jeremiah says, "Woe is me, my mother, that you bore me, a man of strife and contention to the whole land!(W) I have not lent, nor have I borrowed, yet all of them curse me."

And... Why is my pain unceasing,
my wound incurable,
refusing to be healed?
Will you be to me like a deceitful brook,
like waters that fail?

-----

He asks, "Will you fail me?" Read the end of the book, it ends with exile and no happily ever after.

Long blog post short: Please know that if you are suffering, you have the chance to show the world that God is your treasure. Not stuff. Not health or wealth or brand new cars.