March 3
Read: Deuteronomy 31:14-30
A church we once attended had a special prayer group that prayed during the morning service. There were typically three persons assigned at a time. They went into a basement room during the service and prayed for God’s blessings and power on the preaching, the singing, the praying and the entire service. One morning when my wife and I had a turn in the closet, we were accompanied by a businessman who was a member of the church. The conversation wandered onto investments and savings, and the businessman was lamenting a significant loss in recent months. After he spoke of it, he looked at us and said, as if he were just thinking of it, “Oh, but you guys live by faith.”
I understood what he meant. He was simply saying that as supported missionaries, we probably didn’t or couldn’t rely on a monthly dividend check to get us through. And he was right. We were accustomed to going to God for our needs and seeing his blessings upon our lives. Certainly he had enough money in the bank that he never had such concerns.
But the Bible says a number of times, “The just shall live by faith.” That doesn’t mean we should all take a vow of poverty, but it does mean we should be looking to God as the supplier of our needs and not our bank accounts or our employer or especially the state. The danger in having too much is that we cease to see God as the source of everything and start to rely on ourselves or on someone else.
Moses, in Deuteronomy 31:20, predicted what would happen to the Israelites when they got into a land of plenty. “For when I shall have brought them into the land which I swore unto their fathers, that floweth with milk and honey; and they shall have eaten and filled themselves, and waxen fat; then will they turn unto other gods, and serve them, and provoke me, and break my covenant.” He essentially says when they achieve affluence, they will forget me. What was true of the Israelites has been true of every civilization God has chosen to bless. Western Europe, blessed of God and affluent, has reached a point where they rely on themselves. Respect and love for God is nearly dead in those countries, and evangelizing in them, according to one well--known preacher, is like planting okra on concrete. Unfortunately we seem to have forgotten the penalty for apostasy is judgment (see Judges, entire book; and consider the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities).
Trying to keep your balance when everyone else is losing his can be quite a challenge. I suggest we consider carefully the words of the wise man in Proverbs, who wrote in chapter 30:8-9, “Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the LORD? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.”
Just a servant,
Bro. Tom
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