This is an age-old complaint: Asaph is appalled at the prosperity of the wicked in Psalm 73. Surely the reward of the wicked is in this life ("...whose reward is in this life..."). The Bible says that the rich and the poor have this in common: The Lord is the maker of them all. To be sure, prosperity is not the sign of God's favor or the litmus test for specific personal blessing--they may just be following the "law of the jungle" and the "survival of the fittest" rule better than the pack.
Some modern-day preachers insist that, if you aren't prospering or aren't in excellent health and successful, that you are out of the will of God or are lacking in faith--like you haven't turned in your spiritual lottery ticket yet. God does indeed bless some of the faithful in all ways even making them rich, and God does indeed bless all believers in some ways--but it is to the discretion of the triune God who gets what blessing.
We live in the "what's-in-it-for- me" gospel or "name-it-and-claim-it preaching where they ask what can God do for them, rather than what we do for Him. This is a spin on Jack Kennedy's speech ("Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country!). Have we forgotten duty to our Creator? They are jumping to conclusions by insisting that God wants all believers to be prosperous (now by whose standard anyway?) and even healthy (we all will die, for instance-it's not cancer that's terminal, it's life (caveat emptor)! Buyer beware!
Watch out for the "prosperity gospel" or even "social gospel", which are misnomers and portray a counterfeit message. If you can't preach this gospel to the starving everywhere it is not the true gospel. They want you to believe that all you need is the right formula, right blessed water, prayer, or faith seed. This is bogus! God promises to meet our legitimate needs and not necessarily our wants. And the reason He meets our needs is so we can do good works (2 Cor. 9:8). Jesus said you will know them by their love (John 13:35), not their prosperity!
Don't store up treasures on earth! Don't rejoice in your 401(k)but in the Lord! I have been told that I'm rich because I don't have any debts and I live in the relative security of income (regardless of how low it is), it meets my needs and gives me enough to give away to God's causes. Being rich (look at the average world income) is only relative and a matter of definition. We are to be spiritually rich--woe to him who is fiscally rich but not spiritually rich.
Now to my thesis: teaching prosperity theology is like teaching karma because you treat God like a soda dispenser or coke machine trying to get what you want out of Him. Press the right buttons, etc. You get the impression that you deserve to be rich because you have sown the seed of faith. Actually, it says in Deut. 8:17-18 that God is the one who makes one prosper and in Isa. 48:17 it says that God leads you in the right ways to riches ("For your own good I teach you and lead you along the right path"). But God also prospers the wicked who play by the rules of God's economy. It also rains on the wicked.
The believers that I know that are prosperous are that way because of good work ethic and wise investments, not because they tithed their way to riches. God is no man's debtor though You cannot out-give God, this is not a ticket to riches (1 Tim. 6:5 says disparagingly that those "...who think that godliness is a means to financial gain" are in error. Karma teaches that you deserve what you get(even from a previous life) and that is contrary to grace and God's blessings. No matter how rich or poor we are, we owe our blessings to God. Soli Deo Gloria!
Some modern-day preachers insist that, if you aren't prospering or aren't in excellent health and successful, that you are out of the will of God or are lacking in faith--like you haven't turned in your spiritual lottery ticket yet. God does indeed bless some of the faithful in all ways even making them rich, and God does indeed bless all believers in some ways--but it is to the discretion of the triune God who gets what blessing.
We live in the "what's-in-it-for- me" gospel or "name-it-and-claim-it preaching where they ask what can God do for them, rather than what we do for Him. This is a spin on Jack Kennedy's speech ("Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country!). Have we forgotten duty to our Creator? They are jumping to conclusions by insisting that God wants all believers to be prosperous (now by whose standard anyway?) and even healthy (we all will die, for instance-it's not cancer that's terminal, it's life (caveat emptor)! Buyer beware!
Watch out for the "prosperity gospel" or even "social gospel", which are misnomers and portray a counterfeit message. If you can't preach this gospel to the starving everywhere it is not the true gospel. They want you to believe that all you need is the right formula, right blessed water, prayer, or faith seed. This is bogus! God promises to meet our legitimate needs and not necessarily our wants. And the reason He meets our needs is so we can do good works (2 Cor. 9:8). Jesus said you will know them by their love (John 13:35), not their prosperity!
Don't store up treasures on earth! Don't rejoice in your 401(k)but in the Lord! I have been told that I'm rich because I don't have any debts and I live in the relative security of income (regardless of how low it is), it meets my needs and gives me enough to give away to God's causes. Being rich (look at the average world income) is only relative and a matter of definition. We are to be spiritually rich--woe to him who is fiscally rich but not spiritually rich.
Now to my thesis: teaching prosperity theology is like teaching karma because you treat God like a soda dispenser or coke machine trying to get what you want out of Him. Press the right buttons, etc. You get the impression that you deserve to be rich because you have sown the seed of faith. Actually, it says in Deut. 8:17-18 that God is the one who makes one prosper and in Isa. 48:17 it says that God leads you in the right ways to riches ("For your own good I teach you and lead you along the right path"). But God also prospers the wicked who play by the rules of God's economy. It also rains on the wicked.
The believers that I know that are prosperous are that way because of good work ethic and wise investments, not because they tithed their way to riches. God is no man's debtor though You cannot out-give God, this is not a ticket to riches (1 Tim. 6:5 says disparagingly that those "...who think that godliness is a means to financial gain" are in error. Karma teaches that you deserve what you get(even from a previous life) and that is contrary to grace and God's blessings. No matter how rich or poor we are, we owe our blessings to God. Soli Deo Gloria!