In his book entitled What on Earth am I Here
For? Rick Warren states: "It is a fatal mistake to assume that God’s goal for your
life is material prosperity or popular success, as the world defines it. The
abundant life has nothing to do with material abundance, and faithfulness to
God does not guarantee success. God is far more interested in your character
than your comfort. He’s more interested in what you are becoming than in making
this life easy for you. Remember, life is a test.
So many evangelists today attempt to get inside our heads
with a message that "God wants to prosper you." To me, any message that puts the emphasis on
me is suspect from the start. After all,
the root of all sin is self-centered ness. I guess if people come to The Lord
with this kind of message, good for them, but for me it is always dangerous to
put the emphasis on me and my wants, desires, goals, or dreams. I need a high degree of accountability to
remain focused on God's will rather than my own. To me the gospel message is all about who
God is and what he did to reconcile a lost world to Himself, and what he is
doing to call each uf us into relationship with Him. In short, it's all about
God, not me.
1 comment:
I believe God does want to prosper me. Spiritually. He wants me to grow in as fast a rate as I am able to become closer to His character, to have His concerns, to see the world how He sees it. He wants me to have more joy, more peace, more longsuffering, more patience, more love, and to show more grace.
Is life really a test? A test seems to mean that there is a Pass or Fail. In that case, I don't see how we don't all fail. I'm not convinced that life is a test. I think life is growth. We choose how and where we grow. We are either growing towards God, or we're growing away from God. Many times it seems we also get to choose how fast we grow.
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