God's Principles - Part Three - Financial Health

The Word of God is full of advice on how to live a healthy life mentally, emotionally, financially, physically and spiritually (3 John 1:2). If we ferret them out of the chapters and verses, we find amazing truth by which to live our life (Proverbs 4:22).

When our thoughts, words and deeds please the Lord, even our enemies are at peace with us (Proverbs 16:7). He daily increases our blessings, and this even includes our children (Psalm 37:25, 115:14). We lack nothing that we truly need (Psalm 34:10; Deuteronomy 28:6; Philippians 4:19).

God actually gives the ability and wisdom to produce wealth to those who covenant with Him (Deuteronomy 8:18; Psalm 24:1). He yokes up with us to carry our burdens each moment of the day, because He is the only God who truly saves (Psalm 68:19).

God's blessings bring us wealth, without the painful toil that so many must endure (Proverbs 10:22). When we humble our self enough to respect, honor, obey and consult the Lord throughout the day, we reap riches and honor (Proverbs 22:4).

The secret to financial success in life is to seek God's Kingdom before our own desires, and He will give us everything we need (Matthew 6:33-34). When our ways please the Lord, He also gives us wisdom, knowledge and happiness (Ecclesiastes 2:26).

       

Prayer:

Father God, thank You for Your abundant prosperity for Your children. You bless the fruit of our labors, and our physical and financial needs. You open for us the windows of Heaven and the storehouse of Your bounty. You send rain to water our gardens, and You bless all the work of our hands (Deuteronomy 28:11-13).

As we pay attention to and obey Your precepts, we will always find fulfillment, peace, joy and richness in our life. Remind us to tithe a tenth of our income; because if we do not, we are guilty of robbing You. However, when we are faithful tithers, You open the floodgates of Heaven and pour out Your abundance of blessings on us, so that we have enough to share with those in need (Malachi 3:10).

Thought for the Day:

Financial responsibility and honoring the Lord with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength will result in His bountiful provision in our life, His protection over our resources, and His abundance in all of our endeavors.

- Malachi 3:11-12; Deuteronomy 29:9

God in the Details

 

God does not often show Himself strong for us during a trial. Initially, this hurts our feelings and causes us to doubt His love for us. However, God's love is exactly what prevents Him from rescuing us from life's hurts and challenges.

God is teaching us that this life is inconsequential in His larger scheme of the ages. His goal in our life is to transform our body, soul and spirit from this humble, earthly state into conformity with His glorious eternal plan for us.

He also shows us that all things, even our health, finances, comfort, suffering, family and life are subject to Him (Philippians 3:20-21). As His Spirit sanctifies us, we learn to submit to His will and to surrender our entire life to His wisdom and direction.

This gives us hope in God, rather than despair from overwhelming circumstances, thoughts and feelings. He is constantly at work in our life, planting seeds for a miracle in all of our trials.

We just have to patiently wait for Him to reveal them to us. He longs for us to trust in Him alone, and to desire His will instead of our own goals and plans.

We eventually learn that our suffering in this world cannot be compared to the glory of living in God's presence both now and throughout eternity (Romans 8:18).

Hardships are merely temporary and fleeting, especially as we keep our eyes on Christ and the prize of our inheritance of the Kingdom of God (Acts 17:11; 1 Peter 4:12-13; James 1:1-13).

Prayer:

Father God, help us to meditate on the truth that You are in complete control of everything in this world. Allow this fact to penetrate deep within our soul - our thoughts, choices and feelings - so that we learn to trust You and not our human reasoning throughout every moment of our day. We do not need to understand Your thoughts, because they are so much more profound than our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9).

You simply ask us to remain open and willing to submit to and accept Your will and ways - even in the trials. You renew our human spirit by making Your truths known to us. We are created in Your image (Colossians 3:10), we have Your mind (1 Corinthians 2:16), and by Your Spirit we learn to walk as You would walk in our shoes (1 John 2:20).

Thought for the Day:

As the reality of the fact that our life is hidden with Christ in God becomes more of a reality every day, we draw away from the world, the flesh and the devil and find our true joy only in service to our King Jesus. - Romans 12:2

Spectating or Serving

The church is the Body and Bride of Christ, commissioned to carry the gospel into all the world, and especially in our local community. We reach out with the gospel of Christ to friends, relatives, work and hobby associates and neighbors (Mark 16:15-16).

We serve in one ministry in our local church as the Lord calls us to assist, working in an area in which we are interested, and remaining faithful to that calling until God directs us to serve in a new direction in our church body (Romans 12:4-5).

When we see a need, or something that is blocking the growth of our church family, rather than complaining, ridiculing and looking for another church, we put our hand to the plow and help to change things for the better.

This may require that we increase our financial giving, spend more time supporting the church leadership and ministries, taking the initiative to ask the leadership the ways in which we can be the most help to the Body and allowing them to equip us for this ministry.

We do not expect our church to have the personality, ministries, outreach and worship identical to every other church in town, because God gives each congregation His own unique flavor to meet the need for which He designed our particular congregation.

We faithfully pray to the Lord of the Harvest to bring workers into the field; and we serve as an example of a loving, outreaching, soul-winning, hardworking member of the local church where God calls us.

When we do this, we see God's hand faithfully supplying all the needs in our life and in the life of that congregation; and we feel blessed to be a part of His work in our community as we partake in the ministries of the family of God meeting in the facilities which God provided and for which we care and contribute towards.

Prayer:

Father God, raise up congregations across the nation that are committed to one another as Your family. It is so easy for a person to divorce a congregation and go across town to find one that better suits their needs, with no regard to Your will for them in service to that original congregation. Help us to covenant together in faith and to fellowship around the Gospel instead of the worship or preaching style, the size of the bulletin or the amount of lights and instruments used on the stage.

Teach us to agree on the central truths of Your Word and to live by these truths rather than by our personal preferences and carnal desires. Inform us about the true meaning of our spiritual gifts and help us to find a place to use those gifts for the mutual edification of the Body in which You call us to serve.

Remind us that contrary to popular belief, the church is not a gathering of spectators called to criticize the music, minister and ministries of a particular congregation. Before we were even conceived, You called us and placed us in a certain church in order to serve the Body in any needed ministry to which you call us (Ephesians 2:10).

Thought for the Day:

We do not discriminate in the fellowship of the church, but we include every race, nationality, dialect and personality; however, we do insist on members adhering to the primary principles of the scripture and living according to its dictates rather than the liberal, all-inclusive attitude of the world today; everyone is welcome to attend, but God only offers membership in His family to adherents of Biblical Truth.

The Choice is Yours

 

We make dozens of choices every day: when to wake up, where to work, what to eat, what clothes to wear. Any choice we make in life takes our full trust. We trust in our parents, teachers, employers, finances and our roof not to leak. Yet, we find it too hard to trust in God. We fear that He will require too much from us, ruin all of our fun or let us down one too many times. The truth is that following God is the only choice that offers a 100% guarantee.

Our parents may pass away, our teachers change every year, our employers lay us off, our commodities fail, and it’s inevitable that our roof will leak at some time or another. Yet, God gives us a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11). His plans give us ultimate success rather than failure. We may lose a battle, but He already won the war over sin and death. He offers us eternal life, which starts the moment we submit our life to Him. Our surrender is gradual, but consistent.

As Catholics, my parents baptized me at birth. Then at age 12, I went through confirmation. The purpose of this exercise was to allow me to choose Christ for myself. However, I had no idea what I was doing. The nuns made me memorize an entire booklet of catechism questions, and then stand before the Bishop who slapped my cheek to remind me to stay true to Christ regardless of persecution. Neither baptism nor confirmation taught me to trust in Christ.

I did religious rituals out of obedience to my parents, but they had no spiritual significance for me at all. It was in my first year of college when I read, The Cross and the Switchblade, by David Wilkerson, that I saw the stark distinction between saved and unsaved people. The unsaved struggled endlessly to carve out a living in this life. The saved trusted in Christ for everything. He provides their secure and abundant life on earth and for eternity (Proverbs 16:9). I quickly surrendered my life to Christ.

A life in Christ has nothing to do with self-effort (Ephesians 2:8-9), and everything to do with ceasing from our labor and entering into Christ’s rest (Hebrews 4:10). Life no longer includes our choices. As we take our delight in Him, God puts His desires in our heart (Psalm 37:4). We submit to God’s Spirit who leads us to function in the work, which God prepared for us to do before we were born (Ephesians 2:10). The best choice is to the do the will of Him who sent us (John 4:34).

Prayer:

Father God, You predestined us according to Your foreknowledge to live in such a way that we advance Your Kingdom in the earth as we fulfill Your will for us (Ephesians 1:11; Romans 8:29). This takes all the guesswork out of our life. We simply follow the leading of Your Spirit each and every moment of the day. We are persuaded that You will keep us until the day we come to dwell with you (2 Timothy 1:12).

Thought for the Day:

We intimately know the God who gave His life for us, and lives in and through us. – Philippians 2:12-13