Saturday, March 06, 2021

God Prospers His People

God blesses whoever he chooses despite the fact that nobody deserves it.


Genesis 30:25-26 Soon after Rachel had given birth to Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, “Please release me so I can go home to my own country. 26 Let me take my wives and children, for I have earned them by serving you, and let me be on my way. You certainly know how hard I have worked for you.”

Genesis 30:43 As a result, Jacob became very wealthy, with large flocks of sheep and goats, female and male servants, and many camels and donkeys.

It is so easy in the United States to believe that prosperity is an indication that God is pleased with his people. We fail to realize that we can be very prosperous and blessed despite the fact that we are living outside of the will of God.

Earlier in life Jacob didn't rely on God to get the blessings and privileges that were promised to him. He and his mother relied on their own cunning to make God's will happen but instead of realizing the blessings of God Jacob has to leave home emptyhanded and lonely. 

In todays scripture it seems that Jacob hasn't learned much about relying on God to come through for him. Jacob is still relying on self to get things done and he devises a scheme that was based on superstition to make his flocks grow in number.

It is amazing that even after the way that Jacob was treated by Laban he still stayed with him and continued to work for him. Perhaps he stayed because Laban only had two daughters and Jacob would be the adopted son as the heir to Laban's wealth. His decision to leave Laban and return to his homeland seems to happen after Laban's sons were born.

Success cannot be equated with spirituality and it is not a sign that God is pleased with you. We adopt the prosperity gospel because we live in the greatest country in the world with the greatest amount of personal riches among the general population but God didn't bless us because of us and our prosperity doesn't mean that he is happy with us. 
Genesis 28:14  Your descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth! They will spread out in all directions—to the west and the east, to the north and the south. And all the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your descendants.
God wasn't always happy with the heroes of the faith but God promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that they would be blessed and that through them the rest of the world would be blessed as well. Have you considered what that means for you and I? 

We have been blessed physically, financially and spiritually so that we can pass the blessing on to others:
  • I can bless others physically by doing things for them that they don't have good health, time or energy to do. (Matthew 5:41, Galatians 6:9-10)
  • I can bless others financially by being a good steward of the riches that God has given. I need to use God's financial blessings wisely for his purpose instead of fulfilling my desires to have nice things and to impress others. (Luke 12:13-21)
  • But most of all I can bless others spiritually by sharing the good news about God's son so that they will inherit the riches of Heaven by becoming a child of God. (Isaiah 61:1)
I would like to suggest to you that blessing others isn't just about meeting basic needs. We tend to look for the down and out when we think about blessing others, that's not a bad thing, but God wants us to be a blessing and go the extra mile with anyone that we have contact with.

It's not wrong to be rich but there are a lot of warnings in scripture about the dangers of being rich. We need to ask ourselves if we are being good stewards with the physical, financial and spiritual wealth that God has given us? 
Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can. -John Wesley
The average church member does so little with their blessings for the kingdom. If we squander the riches and blessings of God on ourselves, while the scriptures go untranslated and nations go unreached because of a lack of funds to take the gospel to them, we’re not being good stewards.

The level of blessings that I have received from God is very inappropriate for the way that I have behaved. I have been like Jacob, I have tried to get ahead without consulting God, I have used my methods to help God out and yet he has still chosen to bless me so that I can re-gift the blessings for his purpose and for his glory.