Bling

If everything modern-day preachers say is true, it should have been called the Fabulous Lives of the Apostles, or Lifestyles of the Saved and Sanctified rather than the Acts of the Apostles. God don’t want you to be poor, no sir, no how! True, there is no explicit charge for the children of God to be poor. There is no vow of poverty one must take to be counted among the elect. That doesn’t mean He wants you to be rich, either.

God wants you to be saved; He wants you to be sanctified, He wants you to be surrendered, He wants you to be fruitful; He wants you to be faithful; He wants you to be holy. I don’t think rich or poor ever entered into the equation. Some men will be rich, others will be poor, and an individual’s net worth will only serve to amplify their true nature rather than alter it.

If you were a jerk when you were poor and then somehow got rich, you’ll just be a jerk with money. If you were a decent fellow when you had money and somehow lost it all, chances are you’d still be decent with less.

The love of money is a whole different ballgame because your heart only has room for one. Either you love money, or you love God; either you love your sin, or you love God; either you love yourself, or you love God. You can’t love your sin and God simultaneously. The same goes for money, self, title, position, or possessions.

God is jealous and exclusionary. He does not like roommates, and He doesn’t like to share. You can’t play the field with God and expect Him to be okay with it. It’s not going to happen. Either you are His, wholly, completely, and without equivocation, or you belong to another.

Although Jesus was never against wealth, He never said it was a sign of blessing. On the contrary, He said that oftentimes it can be an impediment rather than the blessing so many claim that it is. No, I’m not trying to split hairs, but it is worth noting that neither Jesus nor God promised wealth, riches, or, as the modern parlance of the avarice-driven likes to call it, prosperity. You can’t just say the word simply, either. You’ve got to put some stank on it to make your point. It usually comes out sounding like prosperitay, replete with lots of finger-pointing, lip licking, and the constipated look that signifies they’re serious in their statements.

Then we get into the whole situation about one man’s poverty being another man’s prosperity or vice versa, and all you have is a giant ball of confusion that the unscrupulous swing at from time to time, taking verses out of context or coming up with some laughable analogy which concludes in why you should send them all the money you can afford, and even some that you can’t.

It’s got to be big enough to hurt, they say with a grin. If it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t count! If it hurts too little, the results will be marginal. It’s when you dig yourself into a hole big enough to bury a building in that things really start cooking and that prosperity machine gets a chugging along.

Imagine if every time your kids came to visit, they had their hands out. Imagine if every time your son or daughter dropped by, they wanted something material. And there you were, thinking they just missed you and wanted to see you. Yeah, that’s sort of how God feels when the only thing we think He’s good for is to deliver on our wish list.

There is a world of difference between want and need, and we all know this. God is a good father who will always provide for our needs. We even sing the song. It’s an oldie but a goody. Wants, however, are in a different category, and the things some believers want go far beyond their needs.

Sometimes we even ask for things that God knows would be detrimental to our spiritual well-being. Would He still be a good father if, having known that giving us what we asked for would utterly shipwreck us, He nevertheless would? That’s no longer loving. That’s just a parent who was fed up with their kid’s whining and letting him have the sixth cookie that morning. The parent knows that they will likely have a stomach ache, but the whining got to them, and here they are, allowing their child to do something that will negatively impact them.

God’s not deterred by our whining. If He knows something is bad for us, no matter how much we stomp our feet and hold our breath, He will not give it to us. He loves us that much! Let that sink in for a minute: God loves you enough to say no to you!

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.