Category: Covetousness

The Peril of Prosperity

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There is a danger that we all face as Christians.  This danger is intensified when God tangibly displays His mercy in our lives.  The danger is that we might magnify the gift and forget the Giver.  As believers, there is great blessing in the gifts God gives us, but we must evaluate the real worth of such gifts.  The gift must draw us closer to the Giver.  We must magnify Ghannahod …make Him big.  The gift is a vehicle to do just that.

Hannah is an Old Testament example of just this (1 Samuel 1-2).  Hannah looked upon the gift of a son as an opportunity to magnify her God.  What can we learn from Hannah’s words recorded in 1 Samuel 2.1-10?

When we receive great gifts from God, it is because He is a great God.  There is none like Him (1 Samuel 2.2a-b).  There is no one as powerful as He is (2.2c).  There is no one who knows what He knows (3c).  There is no one who is just as He is (3d).  God is able to bring to bear a great reversal in our lives.  He gives great strength in our great weakness (4b).  The full are hungry (5a) and the hungry are fed (5b).  The barren woman has many children and the mother who has many children becomes feeble (5c-d).  The poor are made rich and the low are exalted (7-8).

God alone takes a life in judgment.  He kills but does not murder.  This is His sovereign prerogative (6).  He guards the feet of the saints or those set apart as His children (9).  But those who reject His King and Anointed One, the Lord Jesus Christ, are silent in eternal darkness.  By self-sufficiency, self-righteousness, or self-dependence, no man prevails.  Strength is found in Christ and in Him alone.  Don’t look at the gift but at the Giver.  Look to…

  1. God’s power and holiness brought to bear in the lives of those who trust in Him
  2. God’s wisdom and justice as comforts when inequity abounds
  3. God’s grace found in the benefits of prayer and His full revelation in the Scriptures

All benefits and blessings in this life point up the character of the God we claim to serve.  If these gifts from God become a means to an end, then we have practiced a very subtle form of idolatry.  We have vaunted up creation above the Creator.  If we do this as children of God, we may expect God to bring chastening instead of prosperity.

If you are like me, you’d rather have all of your needs met right away.  But it seems that we are inclined to stop trusting in God when this happens.  Prosperity is a place of peril for many in our country.  We fall into the delusion that our own hand has provided us with these things.

Our families must understand that suffering, difficult people and circumstances, and the crucible of a trial have the potential to be wonderful messengers declaring the glory of God.  Hannah’s great trial was a barren womb.  She pleaded for a child.  God gave her a baby boy.  She called him Samuel.  Samuel’s name means “asked of YHWH”.  When God grants her request, Hannah has the spiritual depth to magnify God and not the fact that she was no longer barren.

Who or what is magnified when God blesses you?  The answer to this question reveals how spiritual we truly are.

Black Friday Possessions

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And Jesus said to them, ‘Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses’ -Luke 12.15

Covetousness is nothing new, but it is steadily tearing our country apart.  Ron Colone wrote an op ed piece in the Santa Ynez Valley News.  His conclusion is quite bracing:

Well, know this, Black Friday has 100 percent to do with the promotion of covetousness, which is greed, materialism, envy and avarice.  These are not the kinds of feelings that can raise us to our own higher ground.  Instead, they condemn us to cold-heartedness and small-mindedness.

Jesus spoke the words above to His followers in order to challenge them regarding their spiritual wellbeing.  The instruction actually came upon the heels of being asked to settle a family dispute.  A man in one of the crowds that typically gathered around Jesus called out, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me” (12.13).

Jesus instantly knew that the man had his mind fixed on earthly and temporal matters rather than spiritual and eternal matters of the heart.  The focus in our lives should be to take root downward in order to bear fruit upward.  The Lord simply would not allow this man to put Him in such a place.  He said to him, “Man, who made Me a judge or an arbitrator over you?”

The Lord Jesus wouldn’t allow this man to put Him in a place where He would be settling a family squabble about money.  At any rate, the core of this man’s problem was covetousness (greed and avarice).  Contrary to popular opinion, life is not made up of possessions.  Possessions are tools to serve not chains to bind.

How are we to know whether or not we are bound by our possessions?  First, we must examine the way in which we pursue them.  Does it make a whole of sense to wait in line outside of a department store for four days in order to purchase a widescreen television at a deeply discounted rate?  Consider the opportunity costs in making this foolish choice?  How much time was sacrificed which could have been better used for eternal pursuits?  Second, we must examine just how delusional we are to think that possessions will satisfy.  A lot of rich entertainers and athletes prove this point with their self-destructive choices.  It would not take long to marshall serveral examples to prove this point.  Finally, we must pause to recognize just how debasing and destructive rampant materialism is.  It will be the ruination of our country.

Life is too short to justify our drive for more in the United States of America.  It is good to find out early in life that blessing comes to those who behave as a sieve.  The wealth comes in, we pray for discernment, and we distribute it to those who have true needs to be met.  As we think of the month ahead of us, may the Lord grant us the wisdom to see that all we have comes from Him (Psalm 24).  Wealth is simply a tool to serve others and to ultimately serve our Lord and Master Jesus Christ.  After all, we are not redeemed with precious possessions, but rather with the precious blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ.