Sunday Thinkings
Just a couple of thoughts I had today. Happened to have pen and paper on me when I thought them so I wrote them down.
The kewl thing about being saved is that our only burden is the weight of the Bible we are carrying.
Being in this world means we are called to change it. Just like missionaries go to a country to bring about change, we in a wider sense, as Christians everywhere are called to bring about change. To start in our everyday lives. Our schools, universities, workplaces, our streets. The world is our missionfield!
Many Christians have given away everything and then been finacially ruined and it is often used as an example of being careful that what you "think" God is telling you isn't stupid. Well perhaps God still is in it. Perhaps the point of givng it all away and not being blessed is really just God testing those people's faith at the extreme. At poverty. Because it's in the toughest times that people's hearts are truly tested. And those who hold dear to their faith in the Lord during these times are the ones who will indeed be blessed when they come out of it on the other side.
Just a few of my thoughts...
The kewl thing about being saved is that our only burden is the weight of the Bible we are carrying.
Being in this world means we are called to change it. Just like missionaries go to a country to bring about change, we in a wider sense, as Christians everywhere are called to bring about change. To start in our everyday lives. Our schools, universities, workplaces, our streets. The world is our missionfield!
Many Christians have given away everything and then been finacially ruined and it is often used as an example of being careful that what you "think" God is telling you isn't stupid. Well perhaps God still is in it. Perhaps the point of givng it all away and not being blessed is really just God testing those people's faith at the extreme. At poverty. Because it's in the toughest times that people's hearts are truly tested. And those who hold dear to their faith in the Lord during these times are the ones who will indeed be blessed when they come out of it on the other side.
Just a few of my thoughts...
posted by Rayd at 11:04 pm
7 Comments:
You remind of winnie the pooh.
Think, think, think
not in a bad way, you just do
The problem lies not in the gift, but the giver:
What was the motivation? Who/what was given to? It's better to give to a poor person looking to get "back on their feet" than some organization that claims to be helping the poor.
God never intended believers to give away what they need, He promises to load us with benefits daily so we have abundance to bless others - an alien concept to the dispensational, denominational religious world, but nonetheless the truth.
I was really hoping for a comment on this blog. The wealth issue is one of the most debated issues among Christians considered almost parallel to debates such as creation v evolution and arminian v calvinist.
The problem that arises from reading the Bible, as many non-Christians will point out as evidence of the non existence of God (wrongly), is that there appear to be contradicitons. This causes some people to interpret the Bible in one way, and others by the other extreme (regarding the contradicted issue). I would just like to point out that I DO NOT BELIEVE THE BIBLE CONTRADICTS ITSELF IN ANY WAY.
And here is why:
When someone reads the Bible they read a particular phrase and then for themselves have to interpret what it means. This should be done by considering both the meaning it would have meant when it was written aswell as the literal meaning and then determining which of the two (if not both) that it really means. OK got that out of the way. now what happens when one verse says something different to another?
Well as an example I will use the topic of the post.
Wealth. Some verses talk about giving away worldly wealth to those who need it (please note this is generalisation, for specifics read your Bible), where other verses talk about being good stewards of money and maintaining wealth so that you can support others in need.
This is a so-called contradiction.
I disagree because there are different things to learn from each set of verses.
The first verses teach us we need to care for others. If money becomes more important than the welfare of others then we need to deal with it by freeing ourselves of it. Essentially I believe they are telling us to not be slaves to money.
The second verses teach us that we need to look after what we have been given. We came into this world with nothing, we take nothing when we leave it. So basically we are just stewards of God's dosh. We need to take care of His stuff and that involves using it to make His kingdom greater. How do you make a God's kingdom greater? You help the underdogs of society, you show love and kindness, you put to good use the wealth so that His Kingdom extends throughout the world.
So the two sets of verses can work together. Here's the next problem. God.
Sometimes God just puts Himself right into the hisslehassle of your life and tells you to do something really out there. For instance, "Go to Zimbabwe and help young single mothers support their family..."
And so you pack up your life in NZ and leave, using your wealth to set up a business to support those afore mentioned. two months in the business crashes bad, you run out of funds and end up poor as a streetkid in Beijing.
SO... the question is, what do you interpret from that?
The question is, was it really God the person was listening to (Ephesians 1:1-12)?
The outcome was not godly (3 John 2), so how could the so-called "revelation" have been (2 Corinthians 4:4) ? It's always amazed me how folks that run off on such foolish escapades are usually the same ones who'll blast a Believer who is genuinely obedient to Scripture as a "charismatic fanatic" or "hyper-faith". There's a difference between charity and altruism: Charity is neighbor helping neighbor. Altruism looks like charity, but is really nothing more than vanity and egotism, because the motivation is wrong.
1 Corinthians 12-14 tell the Believer about the REAL resources he has to help people with in this day and time, and these resources are available for use whether one is rich or poor.
That's a fair enough arguement.
It's changed my viewpoint towards this subject from when I first wrote this post.
If God didn't want you to lose all your money, then you wouldn't. ahaha I laugh at people disliking my argument
It's quite a hard topic I think to cover and I don't think there is a "correct" answer as such. Job was the richest man on earth and he wasn't charitable, but on the other hand, I think desiring wealth is wrong. Actually as soon as I typed that I realised I'd like to be rich, I think most people do, I don't knwo if the basic desire for money and wealth is bad but maybe you're attitude towards achieving it, if at all. I think I'm going round in circles here.
I think I mostly agree with galt, I don't think losing money for the sake of God is necessarily holy in itself, what if I thought God told me to gamble it all so I could get more and spend it helping the homeless. I really don't know where I'm going with this..
God doesn't say money is the root of all evil. He does say "the LOVE (agape) of money is the root of all evil." I know believers with wealth, who have a healthy attitude about it, seeing it as nothing more or less than a tool. It's the wealthy people that want more and more of it that seem to consequently and continually manifest the disasters, the divorces, the disease and such: "Wealth gotten by vanity shall quickly be diminished".
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