God's Insurance Policy

“Honor the Lord with your possessions, and with the firstfruits of all your increase; so your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will overflow with new wine.” Proverbs 3:9-10 In the lives of most people, the priority is making money. Now, there is nothing wrong with making money. Indeed, a righteous man will provide for the needs of his family. But the question is HOW does he go about it? Well, he gets an education in the field that he is most interested in, then he gets a job. This is all good. However, his livelihood will always be under threat. What if he loses his job? What if he experiences a disaster in his life and it takes all he has to recover? What if someone steals his identity and takes all his money? What if the stock market crashes and he loses all he had in his savings? There is a better way. You might call it “God’s insurance policy.” The Word of God instructs us in the wise way to see to our needs being met. If a man or woman will follow the instructions of the Lord, he can rest assured that the Lord will take care of him no matter what. The Lord says that if one will honor God with his possessions and with his tithes, his life will be filled with plenty and his cupboards will overflow. Let’s take a look at Malachi chapter 3: “‘Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and TRY ME now in this,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it.'” Malachi 3:10 What a person does with his money is a huge indicator of the faith level and the character of that person. No one wants to part with his money, so to suggest to him that he should honor God with his possessions will usually meet with all the excuses of why he cannot do that. Yet the secret is that if he does it God’s way, many times those reasons disappear. If all would follow this directive from God himself, it could eradicate a lot of poverty. You can’t obey the Word of God and lose out. However, the ways of God are “foolishness” to the world. Does this all sound like foolishness to you? “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” 1st Corinthians 2:14 To those who believe, the ways of God are the ways to salvation, happiness, and joy. If one desires his assets to be protected by the Lord, he needs to start operating in the “foolishness” of God’s Word, because the Word of God is faithful. God has made the sustenance of his “house,” the church, dependent on the tithes of the believers. When a believer brings his tithe, God has promised to pour out upon him a blessing way out of proportion to what he has given. One of the most difficult things I’ve had to do in my walk with God, is to deliver this message to people who are poor. To tell a poor person that the way out of poverty is to obey the Word of God and bring a tenth of what little he has – well how does one have the courage to say that to a person struggling just to survive? Yet this Word has not failed in any instance in which I have had to tell this to someone. Without fail, each one later reported back to me the wonder of what God did in response. Why is that? It’s because when a person is willing to part with a tenth of his income, in doing so he is demonstrating where his faith lies. In parting with his money, he is stating that his faith is not in the world system, his faith is not in his ability to make money, his faith is in the Word of God. And God will honor that. But let’s not stop there. Many only quote the passage in Malachi this far. But the next verse is an extremely important part of the promise: “And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes…” Malachi 3:11 A man might have a lot of money, but his resources can be consumed by “the devourer.” The devourer can set up circumstances in which a man’s income, however great, becomes worthless by going into a bag with holes. Left to himself, the man who does not honor God with the tithe God requests, will oftentimes see his income go to waste. The more he makes the greater the holes. He just can’t get ahead. “And he who earns wages, earns wages to put into a bag with holes.” Haggai 1:6 But God promises to rebuke the devourer for the man or woman who makes the decision to place his trust in the Lord, and not in himself. He will find that all his needs are taken care of. God’s insurance policy has to be received by the person who has made this decision, and it’s a commitment he is to keep all the days of his life. If there are ups and downs to test that commitment, he has to remember that he signed on to God and he must weather the storm. He will find out in the end that you can’t out-give God. That person will lack for nothing. Pray with me: Father, just the suggestion that I should part with a tenth of my income causes fear inside me. I’m struggling just to get by, so telling me to give some away – defies common sense. But I realize that the test of faith takes place when one is called upon to defy common sense in order to obey your Word. HELP ME TO TRUST YOUR WORD and be willing to obey you, and to do what you have prescribed. Help me to let go, to transfer my trust base from myself to you, knowing that one does not lose out with God. I pray for the courage to step out in faith, defy common sense and the ways of the world, and place my trust in your Word, knowing that what you have said, that you will do. I thank you Father, for the protection you offer and I choose to believe.

A Paradox - The Greatness Of The 'Simple'

In this passage, wisdom is speaking: "Whoever is simple, let him turn in here." Proverbs 9:4

The way of wisdom does not come naturally to the citizen of the world. Men are not born with wisdom, because mankind is fallen. Wisdom has to be sought out, pursued, prayed for. The excuses have to be overcome, the deceptions that all mankind are subject to, must be forsaken. Wisdom is not reserved for the intellectual, or for the cultured, or for the great men of society, no, the Scripture invites "the simple." Many a great man of renown is a fool. He thinks himself wise, he has established for himself a name, but in the eyes of God it's a different story, he is a fallen and pathetic human being deceived and filled with pride. The least in the Kingdom of God is far better than the greatest in the world. And that's the point. Which is better, attaining to a great name, or being great in the eyes of God? Generally speaking, these two are opposites. So what will you do oh man, will you spend your life seeking to achieve greatness? In the end, what will it have gained for you - for the end of each man is the same - a grave in the ground or ash in an urn. As it is said, death is the great equalizer. vs 6: "Forsake foolishness and live, and go in the way of understanding." If a person desires to be great in the eyes of God, first he must put away foolishness. The ways of the world are foolishness in the eyes of God, says the Lord. "For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God." 1st Corinthians 3:19 Whom do you admire? The expert speaking on the daily news? Do you trust what he has to say? Don't be a fool, men like this love to argue the great subjects of the world, but they are blind and deceived, and most importantly, they follow an agenda. They spend their lives on things that will not mean a thing when they stand before God. Indeed, most do not give God a thought, they are concerned with themselves and the fame they have achieved, yet the Word of God says that the wisdom of this world is foolishness. Why then do they live their lives in foolishness? It's because they have no idea that they're actually living in foolishness. They think they are great because they have succeeded in achieving great riches, or a great name before the public. What a surprise awaits them when they stand before the Lord. Achieving a great name in the eyes of man and amassing great wealth from his achievement - can mean a man's doom. Indeed, Scriptures say that these have received their reward. The Lord looks upon the heart, and the greatest obstacle to a man being received by God is ...pride. Pride blinds. Pride corrupts. And there is hardly a "great" man on the earth who is not blind and corrupt, and these are two things that will cause a man's doom. God calls "the simple." To be great in the eyes of God will usually mean only the simple will find it. "For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty;" 1st Corinthians 1:26-27 Whoever is simple, let him turn to the Word of God. Don't resist it thinking that it's too hard for you to understand. The truth is, it's too hard for ANYONE to understand. What you will find when you immerse yourself in the Word of God is that it is LIVING. That means that the Spirit of God will speak to you as you read. He will "quicken" the Word and make it personal to you. You will discover things, not from a high-brow ability to understand, but from a relationship with the author. He wrote it FOR YOU. It is personal. Read it. Read it daily. If you come across something you don't understand, as everyone will - just keep on reading. The Spirit of God will make it personal to you, and sometimes in such a great way as to change your whole life. "And you will seek me and find me, when you search for me with all your heart." Jeremiah 29:13 Don't pursue accolades from the world. In comparison to the praise from God, they are meaningless at best, and dangerous at worst. Seek the praise that is from God. That will last for all eternity.

Straining At A Gnat While Swallowing A Camel

The context: Jesus had just healed a man, and it just happened to be on a Sabbath. The Pharisees (the religious leaders) called the man who was healed and questioned him harshly because it was done on a Sabbath. The healed man simply told them what had happened, that he was born blind and that Jesus healed him, adding that from the beginning of the world no one has been able to heal a man born blind. But the Pharisees rejected Jesus based on the fact that he had defiled the law by doing a work on the Sabbath! "Therefore some of the Pharisees said, 'This man is not from God, because he does not keep the Sabbath.'” John 9:16 When I was in Israel, I noticed that they still define the level of a person's righteousness based on whether or not he/she keeps the Sabbath. When speaking of someone they'll say, "oh he's a good man, he keeps the Sabbath," or they'll reject him saying, "he smokes on the Sabbath," or "he drives a car on the Sabbath." To them, it's ALL about the Sabbath - to this day. That's what religion does. It judges persons by the rules they keep or the rules they don't keep. How often have you heard someone speaking of a believer saying, "and he's supposed to be a Christian!" ...based on some way in which he or she did not conform to their idea of what a Christian "should" or should not be. Whether one is a follower of Jesus Christ or not depends on one thing, and one thing ONLY, and that is whether or he/she has been born again by the Spirit of God. You don't have to teach a born-again person what the rules are, they have the laws written upon their hearts. They might fall, they might fail, and all do. But they will get back up and repent, as Peter did after denying Christ. Scripture says that after denying Christ, he went out and wept bitterly. He didn't try to justify himself. He made no excuse. That he denied Christ loomed so terrible in his heart that he sobbed in despair. Sorrow will be the reaction of any born-again person when they realize they have sinned. Religionists are hypocrites. They want you to submit to THEIR laws, not the precepts of the Word of God. When I was a child, I remember in Catholic school that were told we would go to hell if we haven't made our "Easter duties." Easter duties demanded that one go to confession and communion at least once during lent (the weeks leading up to Easter.) We also were taught that the laws of the Catholic church were equal in authority to the laws of God, and breaking them carried the same penalty as breaking any of the ten commandments: if you die without going to confession to a priest you broke a law of the church ...you go to hell. These were the rules of religionists who didn't even KNOW the Lord. Someone I knew in Israel owned a bookstore. He told me that the ultra-orthodox men would come in and go to the back to read porn magazines. They would never in their wildest dreams break the Sabbath, but porn and theft and lies and adultery were the camels in their lives that they didn't even see. "Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!" Matthew 23:24 That well describes all "religionists" of any persuasion. This is not meant to underestimate the seriousness and awfulness of sin. Sin IS serious and sin IS awful. What I am suggesting is that we are not to strain at a gnat by focusing on every little thing a believer does which we consider wrong, and swallowing a camel which will usually be the huge wrongs found in our own life. Do you lie? A religionist will call it stretching the truth - but God says lies originate in the devil himself. Do you hate? Hatred is a destroyer, both through what you say about the person you hate, and also it destroys YOU inside. Do you steal? Do you cheat? Do you eat or drink to excess? Do you curse? Do you lust? Do you bear false witness? These are all camels. A person with any camels in his life is disqualified from having the right to point to the faults in another. "Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the plank that is in your own eye?" Luke 6:42 Let us rethink the way we judge. Don't strain at a gnat in someone's life as long as you have a camel in yours.